Marathon
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, epilogue compliant. Harry's life has become an endurance run, through the remnants of his stressful divorce, his strained relationships with his children, and his increasingly complicated job. But what might make things more complicated than the rest of it is what happens when he saves Scorpius Malfoy's life, and Draco Malfoy insists on assuming the life debt.
1. The Saving of Him

**Title: **Marathon

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Warnings: **Angst, some mild violence, epilogue-compliant

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Harry's life has become an endurance run, through the remnants of his stressful divorce, his strained relationships with his children, and his increasingly complicated job. Yet it seems what's going to complicate it most is saving Scorpius Malfoy's life. Since Scorpius is underage, Draco assumes the debt—and he is determined to pay Harry back. Now if only he could find something Harry actually wanted.

**Author's Notes: **This story began life as a one-shot idea, which means it won't be that long. Though the summary suggests angst, I also intend for this story to have some humor.

**Marathon**

_Chapter One—The Saving of Him_

"That's it," said Ginny's solicitor, leaning back in his chair and beaming at both of them. "You are now officially divorced."

Harry sighed in relief, rubbing his temple, and then winced when he saw the way Ginny glared at him. Okay, in retrospect, he supposed letting that sigh out wasn't the most diplomatic thing to do.

"Thank you," Ginny said, but since she was glaring at Harry, it was obvious the word was directed only to the solicitor. She gave Harry an icy nod and stood up, turning around. Harry thought about calling after her, but what could he say? They had agreed to act civilly in front of the children, never to use the children against each other, and to have a perfectly equal division of time when it came to holidays with James and Albus and all the time with Lily, who wouldn't go to Hogwarts until next year. There was nothing else to arrange, nothing else that _mattered._

Harry stood up and gathered his own papers. His solicitor hadn't been able to attend the meeting this morning, but since it had been a final one to acquire signatures and nothing else, that didn't matter, either.

"Mr. Potter?"

Harry glanced up and smiled a little at Ginny's solicitor, an older man with a long silver beard whose name Harry could never remember. "Yes?" The man had been fierce on behalf of Ginny when he had to, of course, but he hadn't really been _bad. _It helped that there was only so much to argue about. Harry had left the house to Ginny, not caring to live in a place where every piece of furniture would remind him that it hadn't been forever, and while she had naturally wanted some money, there were already laws on the books about how much of a family vault's money could be given to an estranged spouse. It had come down to details, and Harry had let the solicitors handle those.

"Sometimes, it just doesn't work." The solicitor actually reached across the table to pat his hand. "I've just seen that expression on the faces of so many people," he added, apparently deciding that Harry needed to know how the man had known what he was thinking. "As they try to figure out what went wrong, what they could have done to prevent the breakup of their marriage. Sometimes there's nothing. In my opinion, this was one of those cases."

Harry rolled his shoulders a little. He wasn't going to say it if he could help it, but he did have to admit that it was comforting to hear that from someone, that it might not be entirely his fault.

_Other things are, though, _he thought, and managed to smile at the solicitor. "Thanks," he said. "I appreciate it." He turned away and made his way to the Floo connection on the far side of the room, checking his watch. Just enough time to get to Diagon Alley and buy that broom for Lily's birthday before he needed to return to work.

* * *

"Thanks…Dad."

Harry winced. He stood in the middle of the Burrow's drawing room, in a litter of birthday presents and cake and the moving photographs of every member of the family that had been hung on the walls since the kids started being born, and Lily was staring at him with the Nimbus 3000 in her hand and that heavy look in her eyes that told him he had fucked up. _Again._

"You're welcome," he said, and tried to smile at her. Lily stepped it up to a glare. Harry winced again. "What's wrong?" he asked, and in a whisper, because he didn't want to embarrass Lily by making a big deal of this right now.

"I wanted the Nimbus 3002. Not the 3000." Lily held up the broom once, then flung it to the floor. She managed to make it look like she was casting it into a pile of birthday presents, though, so no one else reacted. Lily went on watching him, though, and the way her brown eyes clouded reminded Harry too much of the way Ginny had looked when she told him she wanted a divorce. "Why don't you pay attention to what I _say_?"

"I'm sorry," Harry said, bowing his head. He felt slow and stupid and clumsy and desperate, but he knew that he couldn't say a lot of what he was thinking, because it would make the situation worse. And self-pity wouldn't help, either. He forced his attention back to Lily. "Can I do anything to make it up to you?"

"Turn back time," Lily snapped, and flounced off to the kitchen, where there was still ice cream left.

Harry watched her helplessly, then noticed Molly watching him and tried to cover it up with a nervous smile. "Reckon that didn't work out the way I thought," he told her, since she had heard the whole thing and it was silly pretending otherwise.

"Many things don't," Molly said, and gave him a complex smile before walking after Lily.

Harry ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. He knew that Molly wanted to sympathize with him, and she'd probably had her own hard moments raising her children. But it was difficult for her to do that when Harry had divorced her daughter, and when Harry was the one who had made the mistake.

Harry's wrist rang. Harry sighed and pushed back the cuff of his sleeve to look at the bell hanging there. It was large and silver, with a sharp little blue pendulum hanging from it. As Harry watched, the words streamed out of it into the air, blue letters on a scrolling silver ribbon. _Suspected kidnapping of a Wizengamot member. Report to the Auror Division immediately._

Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to stay here and be with his daughter, but on the other hand, he was excellent with kidnapping cases, and the last time he'd chosen to skip one and remain with his family instead, two children had ended up dying and a woman had been cast into a coma for the rest of her life. No one had said anything to blame him in the office, but no one had _very carefully _said anything. And there were eyes on Harry from all directions the next day when it turned out that he'd turned off his wrist-bell so that no one could request further help.

_I don't know what to do. My children need me, but if someone else's children die because I'm not there…_

Harry spun on the spot and Apparated. He had the feeling that Lily wouldn't welcome either a farewell or an attempt at explanation right now, and the Burrow hadn't had anti-Apparition wards since the war. They lived in a safe world right now.

_Safe for some people, anyway, _Harry thought, and then he was opening his eyes and hurrying towards the nearest Ministry entrance, while the bell on his wrist chimed and retailed more information—location, name of the Wizengamot member, possible location of the kidnapper, possible motives.

This was his job. This was the thing that let him earn money, since the Potter "fortune" had turned out to be far more limited than he'd thought, and he rather thought he should hold the Black fortune in trust for the next person to inherit it.

Letting distractions creep in to his thoughts was dangerous, here. Harry shaped his mind into a single, clear, focused weapon.

But before he did, he allowed himself the single frustrated, wistful thought, _I wish I knew how to make things right as effortlessly with my family as I do with my colleagues._

* * *

"Get under the Cloak, _quick_."

Harry nodded and slid the Invisibility Cloak back over his head. He'd come to Hogwarts for Albus's Quidditch game, and caught Albus coming out of the school already in Slytherin robes and with his broom over his shoulder; Harry had thought they could have a few private words together. But the last time he'd been here, people had swarmed him and stared at him and refused to pay attention to the Quidditch game, and Albus quite understandably wanted him to stay out of sight.

"Good luck," Harry whispered, as they stepped onto the field and he could be reasonably sure no one would hear him. They were all shouting and waving their arms instead.

Albus's face relaxed for a second, and he reached out and tried to pat Harry on the arm, although because of the Cloak, he missed and hit his shoulder more instead. "Thanks, Dad." He hesitated, then whispered, "Just stay out of sight."

"Right," Harry said, and faded back, watching as Albus trotted to the middle of the pitch, waving at the members of the Houses and the professors and what looked like multiple family members here. Ginny was here with Lily, Harry knew, somewhere. Another good reason to stay out of sight, so that they wouldn't feel like Harry was intruding.

Scorpius Malfoy passed Harry, a Beater for the Slytherin team just as Albus was Seeker, and behind him came a tall boy Harry thought was probably related to Marcus Flint. Harry had to quick-step out of the way, since no one could see him, and ended up behind the Hufflepuff stands. He could watch from here in comfort, and he hoped he got to see his son kick Gryffindor arse. Things would have been awkward if Jamie had wanted to go out for Quidditch, but although he was a talented flyer, he described Quidditch as too slow and boring. Harry was afraid his ambitions included breaking his neck in a trick instead.

It seemed like no time before both teams were aloft, scarlet and green robes whipping around them, the players circling each other, diving and twisting and performing all sorts of stunts that had felt a lot less dangerous when Harry was the one _performing _them. He swallowed and kept his eyes on Albus, biting his lip. He hadn't been a good father when he tried to shout Albus down and keep him on the ground when he was ten. Now that Albus was twelve, it would just be worse.

Scorpius Malfoy was a good Beater, Harry noted absently, aiming the balls consistently at the Gryffindor team when he could, but spending more time and effort protecting the Slytherins. Considering that Harry's son was Scorpius's teammate, and the Gryffindor Beaters seemed to aim at him most often, Harry applauded Scorpius's dedication.

But he was watching Albus when a shout and a cry came, and that meant he lost a precious moment whipping his head back around to face Scorpius.

Who was falling.

Harry stared, and then glanced around wildly. Why wasn't someone _doing _something? Oh, a few Slytherin team members were turning their broomsticks, but they were too far away, and the rest had thought the cry was part of the game and kept right on trying to get at the Gryffindors. The Gryffindors didn't try to help, of course. And people in the stands screamed and stared, but no one was _trying to help_.

Harry drew his wand and began to chant, voice steadier than he had thought it would be when Albus's best friend was falling to his doom. Well, it was true that he knew more spells to save someone than most people would, and he'd been under a lot more pressure. "_Caelum!_"

Scorpius went flying back up into the air, as more space opened before and behind him, the way the spell was supposed to do. Harry then cast a Cushioning Charm beneath him, choosing a patch of grass rather than the area of the stands that Scorpius would have hit otherwise, and finished with the Feather-Fall spell. Scorpius came drifting down like a leaf, washing back and forth, and landed on the cushioned grass with no more bad effects than the fear that was written on his face.

Harry tucked away his wand and sighed. Maybe using both the Cushioning Charm and the Feather-Fall had been overkill, but he would rather do that than not use something and have Scorpius be hurt.

By now, Madam Hooch was waving her arms and shouting, and all the players were paying attention. People immediately surrounded Scorpius, Albus dodging down from the sky without a care for the Snitch that almost hit his ear. Harry relaxed as he realized that a bunch of people had already scooped up Scorpius and were carrying him in the direction of the hospital wing.

One of the people who had run towards Scorpius and now followed the group was Draco Malfoy. Harry blinked, then rolled his eyes at himself. Of course it was possible that Malfoy would want to see his son fly, just like Harry wanted to see his.

He came rudely back to reality when he realized that people were peering around the stands and chattering like a treeful of monkeys. They wanted to see where the spells had come from, who had cast them, if the person who had cast them had done something to make Scorpius fall off his broom in the first place so he could be a hero, and so on.

Harry shook his head. It was no wonder that the conspiracy theories in the _Prophet _sold so well, with this kind of audience in the wizarding world to embrace them.

But he didn't want to stay here, as silly as he found them. If someone searched and found him, that would increase the publicity for him, and Albus would be hurt, again, that Harry had disrupted a Quidditch game. Harry moved smoothly backwards, keeping the Cloak bundled tight around him, and out between the gaps left in the crowd of chatterers and searchers and anxious students and parents. As soon as he could get beyond the gates, he Apparated. He would owl Albus later to find out if Scorpius was okay.

* * *

"Dad?"

Harry stumbled into the middle of his drawing room, yawning desperately and trying to tie his dressing gown tighter around his middle. He was so trained to respond to the sound of the Floo in the middle of the night that clothes were a secondary consideration.

Right now, though, it was Albus, and that made Harry cast a small Knotting Charm at the robe just so there wouldn't be any more repeats of what was known around the Burrow as the Unfortunate Towel Incident. He knelt down in front of the fire and nodded to Al to show that he was there if not completely awake yet. "What is it? Is Scorpius okay?"

Al's face softened. "Yes, he is. Thanks." He hesitated, then blurted, "Mr. Malfoy is here and asking if you saved him."

Harry blinked. "Why would he think it was me?" He would say this for Malfoy, he had moved on after the war and never seemed to care one way or the other that Harry was alive. There seemed to be no reason for him to jump to conclusions and assume that Harry was either everywhere, or trying to ruin his life.

"Because he asked me if I saw who it was, and I sort of turned bright red and showed him I knew," Al mumbled.

Harry smiled fondly at his son. Neither of them was any good at lying, and although Al hated it because it was another way he was like Harry besides his looks and playing Seeker and he'd already spent enough of his life in his famous father's shadow, at least Al knew about it and was prepared to deal with it. "All right. You can tell him. I don't care. What?" he added, because Al's face had twisted.

"It _is _a big deal," Al said quietly. "You saved Scorpius's life. It's a life-debt."

Harry blinked some more, then shook his head. "I owed Mr. Malfoy a couple of life-debts, or his family, anyway. And he owed me some. We've never tried to do anything with them."

"This is different, because Scorpius is twelve, Mr. Malfoy says." Al turned around and looked at someone Harry couldn't see, then turned back, nodding. "You have to be of age to claim your own life-debts. Mr. Malfoy will have to fulfill this one because Scorpius is my age. He wants to know what you want."

_Can he make me into what Ginny needs? _But Harry stopped himself before he said it. That wasn't fair to say to one of his kids.

"I can't think of anything he could do for me, Al," Harry muttered. "If he wants to, why doesn't he owl me? I can think of something tomorrow."

Al nodded. Then he hesitated again. Harry waited patiently, recognizing the signs of an Al with something more to say.

"You won't tell anyone else about this, will you?" Al whispered. "Because then everyone is going to know you were there and start asking me why I didn't _tell _them."

"I won't say anything," Harry said quietly. "That's why it would be a good thing to have Mr. Malfoy owl me, because if he's talking about it in the hospital wing _or _the Slytherin common room, someone's going to overhear and start spreading gossip."

Al glared at Harry. "Not all Slytherins gossip! I thought you knew that."

Harry restrained a sigh. _Always saying the wrong thing. _He wondered vaguely if he would have felt the same way about his parents, if they'd lived. "Sorry. I meant that someone will overhear no matter what, if we talk about this aloud. An owl will avoid that."

Al relaxed and shook his head. "Sorry, Dad. I just—my best friend almost died today, and you saved him. I'm happy for that, really I am. But sometimes I wish it was someone besides you doing everything, you know?"

Harry nodded. For the short time Ginny had been a Quidditch player that Al could remember, it had been better for the kids, because it meant they had two famous parents instead of one. "I know. For what it's worth, Mr. Malfoy probably feels the same way."

Al grinned and lowered his voice. "He did say, _Not your father?_ When I told him that I knew who'd saved Scorpius, I mean."

Harry laughed. Al had imitated Malfoy's tone of voice with what had to be absolute perfection. "Tell him to owl me," he repeated. "And I'm very glad Scorpius is okay."

"Okay." Al smiled at him and disappeared from the fire.

"Love you," Harry whispered after him, and went to bed. The next day already promised a lot to think about, and Harry wanted a clear mind.


	2. First Contact

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—First Contact_

Harry sighed as he sat at his desk, and sighed as he sorted through his paperwork, and sighed as he noted the enormous amount of _new _paperwork waiting on the edge of his desk, along with files from cases that other Aurors were currently working but which his superiors thought Harry might like to "take a look at."

Then Harry dug into the paperwork, because sighing didn't get it done, and if he didn't want this much, then he shouldn't have been as successful an Auror.

About ten-o'clock, two hours or so after getting into his rhythm, an owl fluttered silently down on the edge of his desk and sat regarding him. Impressed that any bird, even one only a little bigger than Pig, could find a spot free of clutter on the desk, Harry dug into a drawer for a bag of treats and held it out.

After a close examination of the treats that included twisting its neck at angles that looked like they should have broken it, the owl graciously condescended to accept a few crumbs from Harry's fingers. That told Harry who it belonged to even before he noted the gratuitous red wax seal on the letter.

He only rolled his eyes a little, though, because it wasn't like he hadn't known this was coming.

_Auror Potter, _

_It has come to my attention that you are the one most likely responsible for saving my son Scorpius Malfoy's life at a Quidditch game at Hogwarts yesterday. I recognized two of three spells used, and must argue that the combination of a Cushioning Charm and Feather-Fall Spell is overkill._

Harry grinned. He'd thought the same thing, after all. Maybe he and Malfoy would get along better than Harry had feared they would.

_I am assuming the life-debt as Scorpius will not be of age to claim it for five years, and I refuse to have him burdened by it when he does come of age. We ignored the debts we had between us from the war, to our mutual benefit, but this is one that I am unwilling to let hang over my head. I would like to offer you the sum of six thousand Galleons in order to be quit of the debt. Please let me know within an hour of your receipt of this owl if the sum is acceptable._

_Draco, Lord Malfoy._

Harry snorted. He happened to personally know, thanks to being involved in the Death Eater trials, that the Malfoys hadn't been "Lords" for generations.

But let it stand. It was a harmless thing. And so was the offer of the Galleons, which Harry had to admit tempted him. He wouldn't have to work for a few years if he accepted that, and he could spend more time with his children, try to ease Lily's transition into a child shuffled between different houses and then going to Hogwarts…

But Harry had to sigh when he thought of the cases that would go unsolved and the victims unrescued if he quit the Aurors. No, he had to remain, and the Galleons would just make him uneasy if he accepted them. Another bloody fortune to sit in his vaults with the Black one and be maneuvered around instead of spent.

He wrote his letter as quickly as he could, without actually spattering the whole parchment with ink droplets. That would just make Malfoy think worse of him, and while Harry could normally give a fuck what Malfoy thought, he wanted to make sure that he stayed on good terms with the git because Al was friends with Scorpius.

_Lord Malfoy, _

_I'm sorry, but I can't accept the Galleons. I would have no use for them, and I don't have any projects that are just waiting for money to complete. Why don't we forgive this life-debt the way we have all the others? I don't mind._

_Thanks, but my main concern is the fact that Scorpius is all right, and it sounds like he is._

_Harry Potter._

He gave the letter to the owl, who stared at him for a long second before it accepted the envelope. Harry tried to shake off the idea that the owl knew exactly what Harry had written and disapproved.

He held out another treat, and the owl took off from his desk, letter in one foot and treat in the other, just as Ron rounded the corner. He raised his eyebrows as the owl swerved past his head and set down the steaming cup he'd brought Harry on the corner of his desk.

"What was that all about, mate?"

Harry glanced around and lowered his voice. It was less consideration for Malfoy's pride and more for the fact that no one was supposed to know who had really saved Scorpius yesterday. "I saved Malfoy's son's life at the Quidditch game yesterday. Now he's talking about taking over the life-debt because Scorpius is only twelve and can't pay me, and he offered me money."

"You didn't take it?" Ron gaped at him a little. "But you can't live on the Potter fortune."

Harry shrugged, uncomfortable, not knowing, as always, how to talk to Ron about money. He hadn't been much better at it when it came to Ginny, and that was only another one of the many mistakes Harry had made in his marriage. "I know, but I'd rather have what I can earn on my own and retain my independence."

Ron snorted and kicked out his legs as he flopped down in his own chair. "I can understand _that_. Don't know why Malfoy thinks he can buy everyone, anyway. Did I tell you about Rudderly and the offer Malfoy made to him a few months ago? He said…"

Harry listened and nodded along, laughing in the right places, while he completed some more paperwork. He found his mind lingering more on Malfoy's letter than it should, though. He didn't think Malfoy believed that he could buy everyone, just that money was the best means of negotiating with people, and the only thing most people would want from him—which might not be all that far from thinking he could buy politicians and Aurors, admittedly.

_He might be lonely. I know that he divorced his wife a few years ago._

But an owl arrived from Ginny then, and reminded Harry that he had more than enough people to worry about and matters to arrange without taking up Malfoy's cause.

* * *

"It's all right."

Harry relaxed and smiled, although he took care to wipe it from his face by the time Lily turned around. She had made it clear that she didn't want much emotion from him, and thought the smile and hug he'd greeted her with when she tumbled through the Floo were about the absolute limit of cheerfulness.

"Good," Harry said, and nodded to the kitchen table. He'd had Kreacher make some food for them, since his cooking was mostly limited to things that Lily didn't like or was allergic to. "Shall we?"

Lily floated into the kitchen and took the chair in front of the nearest plate, stolidly and silently reaching for the potatoes and corn and peas and steak Kreacher had made them. Harry studied her from the corner of his eye. His daughter had always puzzled him. Jamie was such an _easy _baby, and Al was a much tougher one, but once Harry understood the silent rules that governed most interaction with Al, then he got along with him fine.

But Lily didn't want much except to be given what she _did _want, and to be left alone. Sometimes she wanted company, but Harry never seemed to know when that was in time to give it to her; she would have gone back to wanting to be alone when he joined her, and her responses would be polite but sullen. Ginny had always been more in tune with her.

"Stop looking at me that way," Lily said, without turning to him. "You look as though you were a Muggle scientist getting ready to cut me up."

Harry flushed and cleared his throat. "Sorry." He reached for the potatoes to put them on his own plate.

Lily turned and stared at him. "Maybe you wouldn't look at me that way if you were ever _around_," she said.

"Sorry," Harry repeated, a little helpless. There had been other reasons, but the main one for his and Ginny's divorce was that he spent too much time on the job. Harry made sure that he had most weekends off, and a lot of evenings and holidays, and of course there would be the odd day or week here and there when he was recuperating from wounds or curses, but that wasn't the same as Ginny's much more regular schedule as a Quidditch reporter for _Witch Weekly._ And it had meant that Harry didn't get to know his children as well.

"You say sorry all the time." Lily's voice rose, and she put her spoon down. "But everyone _else _has a dad who can be with them all the time, like Uncle Ron. And no one _else _has reporters come up and besiege them when they go to Diagon Alley. And _Rose and Hugo _don't have wards on their houses as thick as iron walls!"

"That's because of the reporters," Harry began.

He should have known it was a mistake to try and explain, because Lily was too angry to listen to explanations. She stood up and folded her arms. "And that's the same thing you say all the time," she snapped, "but if they really adored you, they would _listen _when you told them to leave you alone!"

Harry sighed. He wished he could talk about Rita Skeeter, and the generation of new reporters who seemed to have picked up on her ethics and taken her for a role model when Skeeter herself realized that she could make more money writing biographies and retired to do that. He wished he could hint at the more bitter enemies who might be out there, and the way the wards helped him accept that his children could still be safe.

But he hadn't talked about that often, because whenever he thought he _did _hear a rumor or see something that reminded him of an enemy, it always turned out to be only a rumor. After a few embarrassing incidents, he and Ginny had had a Discussion, and Harry had done his best to promise that he wouldn't be paranoid any longer, and also that he wouldn't drag the children into it.

So he sat back down and said quietly, "I'm sorry. Is there something I can do to make it up to you?"

"No." Lily dashed her hand across her eyes, removing some of the angry tears that Harry knew were building up. He winced. Just like her mother, Lily hated to have anyone see her cry, and if she was on the verge of doing so, then she was _really _hurt. "You say that all the time. What I want is for you to stop fucking up, not do it and then ask me if you can make it up to me!"

She ran out of the dining room, heading for the bedroom she slept in here. Harry sighed again. He supposed he could have scolded her for language, but it wouldn't have done any good, and their problems ran far deeper than that.

The sound of the Floo flaring open made him stand and walk into the drawing room. He wondered who would be calling this late, since the bell on his wrist hadn't rung, but maybe it was the Minister, or someone else who wanted to keep the communication more private than it would be if it went out to all the Aurors' wrist-bells.

The face floating there, though, was Malfoy's. At least, it was what had to be Draco Malfoy's, pointy and pale and with that settled sneer on his lips. Harry didn't really recognize him anymore. He recognized Scorpius, but Malfoy was a distant, drifting face, one of a scatter of glimpses at King's Cross Station and across the Quidditch pitch.

Harry blinked, surprised Malfoy could have brought himself to contact Harry after his dismay when Al told him the truth, but then reminded himself that Malfoy loved his son more than he hated Harry. Especially now. "Yes?" he asked.

"You refused my Galleons."

Harry cast a small Privacy Charm around the door to ensure that Lily, if she came out of her room, couldn't hear. He didn't want her or Ginny finding out about what he had done at the Quidditch game. "I don't need them," he said. "And I wouldn't feel comfortable spending them."

"Everyone who works for a living needs more money." Malfoy's eyes flicked down to Harry's trousers as though counting the holes in them. Harry opened his mouth to defend the fact that these were trousers he had had for years and found comfortable to walk in, but then shut it. Why should Malfoy have to hear that? Why should Harry need to say it? "That can't be the reason."

"It is," Harry said firmly. "Besides, I have the Black fortunes if I really felt the need for more money. I would use it in an emergency."

Malfoy regarded him fixedly for a long moment. That seemed to be one of a limited number of expressions he had, Harry decided. The other ones were concern for Scorpius and the expression he would have worn when he learned he now owed a new life-debt to Harry. Harry wondered which one he wore when he was by himself.

"Then use the Black fortune," Malfoy said, with hardly any breath behind the words, "and keep _this _money for an emergency. As long as you take it, and cancel the life-debt with it."

"I don't need money," Harry said. "I can perform some special ceremony to release Scorpius from the life-debt, if you want. I don't _want _anyone to owe me anything."

Malfoy's head rose with the same chilly pride that Harry had seen in his father right after Harry released Dobby. "This is different," Malfoy said. "Because he is young, and because there are no parallel life-debts. I owed you two in the past; you owed me one and my mother one. We were adults, and fighting in a war, and the special circumstances made forgiveness without discussion possible. But not now."

Harry started to ask why, then gave up. Malfoy had just told him, and if Harry asked for more of an explanation, his fixed expression might strain his face to the point where it would crack. Harry could just picture trying to explain to Scorpius how Harry had given his father broken cheeks.

"I don't need the money," Harry muttered, remembering something Hermione had told him about life-debts once. "And they have to be repaid with something the person who saved your life _needs. _Isn't that right? That was why the traditional way to pay them back was saving the other person's life, because they would certainly need help when they were in danger."

Malfoy's head went up, and up. Harry could see all the way down his nostrils, and while he kept them clean, it wasn't so pleasant a sight that Harry wanted to prolong the conversation. "Well, Potter," he said. "You've paid more attention than I thought possible to the magical theory of life-debts. For someone who doesn't want to honor them."

Harry waved his hand. "I can't keep you from paying it if you want to—"

"No, you cannot," Malfoy said, and looked viciously satisfied. "You cannot keep my family in debt to you."

Harry let that go as something not worth arguing, and continued, "But you'll have to find something other than money. I don't need that, and I don't want it."

Malfoy fell silent, regarding him. Then he said, as slowly as though he was talking to himself rather than Harry, "I could make sure that you end up on the front page of the _Prophet _again. I notice they aren't covering your cases as much lately, and seeking other targets more often than might make you comfortable. Isn't good publicity vital to your career? I have connections—"

He had to stop, not because he wanted to, Harry thought, but because he found Harry's belly laugh off-putting. Harry staggered, caught his elbow a sharp rap on the mantle, and straightened up with a desperate snort, shaking his head.

"Thank you, but no thank you," he said. "Really, Malfoy. If you haven't noticed by now that I hate attention and I don't need it or want it, either, then you're not very observant, and you'll be plaguing me about what to pay me eighty years from now."

"Always assuming that you live that long," Malfoy muttered, but he was frowning. "You don't _like _being paid attention to?" The last three words were very slow.

"No," Harry said. "I have enough fame on my own, and all it really does is disrupt my life and the lives of my children. Go ask Albus if he wouldn't have preferred to have a father no one knew politically."

Malfoy did some more haughty, frozen staring, but at least he had lowered his head so that Harry didn't need to look up his nostrils anymore. Finally, he said, apparently to himself, "Very well. So I will make sure that you have something you need and want, and quickly."

Harry shrugged. "You don't want any suggestions from me?"

Malfoy turned to look swiftly at him. "You have one?"

Harry opened his mouth, then sighed and shut it. "No," he said a moment later. He didn't, because everything he wanted—better relationships with his children, a better relationship with Ginny, a happy marriage that had never ended in divorce, a less complicated job—was something he would have to earn for himself, not something Malfoy could give him.

"Of course not," Malfoy said, in a voice that managed to make it sound like water pollution and distant stars going supernova was Harry's fault. "You _would _not. But we will be free of this debt by the end of the month." And he vanished before Harry could ask what was so important about the end of the month.

Harry sighed and dropped the privacy charm, then set out to find Lily and see if he could talk to her.

But she was silent behind the door of her bedroom when he knocked on it, and Harry didn't think it was fair to force her to come out. He retreated to his own bedroom and lay stretched on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, until sleep took him.

His last thought was the same last one he had every evening, at least since he began his divorce from Ginny.

_How did things get so fucked up?_


	3. Endurance

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Endurance_

"Here you go."

Ginny kept her eyes on Lily's face as she received her daughter back at the door of Harry's new house and hugged her gently. "You're okay?" she asked. "You had fun?"

Harry winced. He thought the tear tracks still visible on Lily's face probably told their own story, but he had no idea how to counter that. He had had Kreacher make Lily's favorite breakfast for her this morning—fresh strawberries with whipped cream, and kippers—but Lily had still picked at the food, eaten in silence, and then looked up and announced that she wanted to go back to her mum's, although she was supposed to stay with Harry until the end of the week.

Harry swallowed when Lily nodded. Ginny glanced up at him, and there was no emotion on her face. She was more adept at keeping her feelings under control than Malfoy was, Harry realized, or at least than Malfoy had been when he spoke with Harry last night. When had _that _happened? When had the laughing, blushing bride he loved become this stranger?

_Well, she didn't do it on her own. It probably happened during the times that I was gone, and the times I got back later than I promised her, and the times that I told her I'd be home for dinner and then ended up staying in St. Mungo's. _

In the end, his life just hadn't been _normal _enough for both marriage and kids, and Harry was wondering if it would be normal enough for Lily until she went to Hogwarts.

"Wait outside, please, Lily," Ginny said, her voice exactly like her face. Lily glanced back and forth between her parents as if she wanted to say something, and then bolted out the door and towards the Apparition point. Harry watched her go, watched her red hair bounce in the sunlight, and wondered if his mum had ever looked like that when she was a child.

Granted, all he had of his mum were Snape's memories and some photographs from Hagrid, but he thought she'd been happier.

"Harry."

He winced and turned back to Ginny. She was showing some emotion now, weariness, but she still looked over his shoulder and didn't meet his eyes. Harry knew that was easier for her.

"I have to ask that you keep Lily next weekend," she said. "I have a deadline coming up on that big article I'm writing, an interview that they didn't tell me I'd have to conduct. The Cannons have a new Seeker."

Harry sought for something that would lighten the tension. "And your editor thinks _that _might mean they're going to win?"

Ginny sighed and looked at him. Harry shifted and tried not to feel as clumsy and awkward as he'd felt when he was sixteen.

"I meant," Ginny said, "that you have to keep Lily _all _weekend. No more silly fights. No more getting her so upset that she wants to come home right away." Harry nodded, although part of him noticed that Ginny called the house where she lived now _home _even though they were supposed to share custody of Lily. Well, of course she did. It was the house where Lily had grown up. "I want to spend time with her, but I really can't next weekend. I'm just asking this one thing of you. Turn off your wrist-bell if you have to, but you can't take off in the middle of that weekend for a case. All right."

Harry took a deep breath. "All right."

Ginny's face softened. "Thank you," she said. She hesitated, then added, "I really think the biggest problem is that she doesn't think you _listen _to her. Getting her the wrong present shows that. If you sat down and listened to her, talked about what she wants to talk about and watched her fly, it would help."

Harry smiled. "Thanks for the advice, Gin."

"Sure." Ginny was already retreating back into the emotionless mask she'd shown him before, but that was the most helpful she'd been since the day of their divorce, and Harry wanted to maintain that. "I'll see you next weekend." She stepped out the door and walked to the Apparition point to collect Lily.

Harry watched them before they disappeared, Ginny with her arm around Lily's shoulders and Lily leaning against her as though Ginny was her one support in a hostile world. Harry waved. Lily didn't look around as they Apparated.

Harry put his hand down, and sighed. So. He had some unexpected free time, then, since he'd planned to devote today to Lily. He might as well go to the office and do some paperwork, since there were mounds of it to be done, as always, and that way he would be closer, right in the Ministry, if there was a crisis.

His fireplace chimed before he could even think of going to put on his Auror robes. Harry sighed again and walked over to it, granting permission for the Floo call with a little wave of his wand. He thought he knew who it was going to be, and he wasn't looking forward to another confusing and irritating conversation while part of him still pined for his marriage.

Sure enough, Malfoy's face appeared in the flames, and he studied Harry for a long moment before sniffing and pulling his head up a little. Harry didn't want to inspect his nostrils to make sure they were clean this time. "What do you want, Malfoy?" he demanded, and winced as the ornate mantle above the fireplace poked his elbow. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Harry was old enough not to want any more damage to his joints. His wrists already ached in the rain, even though he hadn't played Quidditch in years.

"I've thought of something that should pay back the debt," Malfoy said.

Harry tilted his head slowly, and folded his arms when he thought Malfoy still looked too optimistic. "Oh?"

"A new owl," Malfoy said. "I notice that you don't actually send messages yourself, and you haven't had an owl since the war, so your other one must have died of old age—"

"She died of a Killing Curse," Harry said, and moved back. He was glad that Malfoy was on the other side of the flames, and had at least that much of a barrier protecting him from the cracking, sparkling magic beginning to move up and down on Harry's fingers. "During the war. Cast by a Death Eater."

Malfoy stared at him. Then he said, "She was just an owl."

Harry wanted to say something about Hagrid and first birthday presents and the way that an owl could become a _friend, _but his tongue got all tangled up behind his teeth. Besides, he'd thought of something better to say to the stupid prick.

"Then so would be the owl you bought me," he said. "Not something that can fulfill a life-debt, you agree?"

Malfoy frowned. "You haven't seen some of the birds that are available, Potter. Eagle-owls, snowy owls—"

"Hedwig was a snowy owl," Harry said, and he really did fear that he was going to lose it, which was stupid, especially in front of someone like _Malfoy, _who wouldn't appreciate what Harry was saying anyway. He shook his head and shut down the Floo. Malfoy's face vanished in the middle of saying something else.

Harry strode to his bedroom to put on his Auror robes, and ignored the Floo when it chimed again. Emergency or Malfoy, it could wait until later.

* * *

Malfoy's small owl performed acrobatics this time trying to land on Harry's desk. Harry had tottering piles of parchment on either side of him, trying to clear up everything he owed by buckling down to the task and _working. _

The owl landed anyway, without knocking anything over, and then fluttered its wings and hooted at him. Harry rolled his eyes at it. "Your master doesn't _need _a response," he said. "Go away."

The small owl held out its wings towards the nearest pile and began to beat them gently. The threat was clear: then Harry didn't need his neat piles of paper, either.

"_Fine_," Harry snarled, and took the letter from the owl. It didn't fly away, which meant Malfoy wanted to engage in another _conversation. _Harry rolled his eyes again, but frowned when he felt a thicker piece of parchment in the envelope than just a letter would have made.

The thinner piece of paper was indeed the letter Malfoy had written, which said simply, _Obviously you grieve over the loss of your owl from twenty years ago more than any normal person should. I have thought of a gift that should fulfill the debt and help you recover from that both at once._

The piece of parchment was an invitation from a Mind-Healer for Harry to call upon him at his earliest possible convenience.

Harry narrowed his eyes. Then he quite calmly took an envelope from the drawer in his desk where he kept them, held up his wand, and cast a controlled _Incendio _on the invitation from the Mind-Healer. The owl screamed and flailed its wings, but Harry never looked at it, and it at last settled back, staring at him with evident fascination.

When the invitation had burned to fine, grey ash, Harry tucked it into the envelope and wrote a short note to Malfoy. _Enclosed please find what I think of your effort to send me to therapy._

Then he gave the envelope and note to the owl, which eyed him cautiously before taking him off again.

Harry smiled at the air, and went back to work.

* * *

"So perhaps the effort to send you to see a Mind-Healer was stupid of me."

Harry closed his eyes. He had come out of his office and was walking to the lifts, feeling tired but accomplished. It was nine in the evening and he'd finally managed to clear the huge piles of paperwork.

And now Malfoy had fallen into step beside him, a faint, abstracted frown on his face when Harry glanced sideways at him.

"It was," Harry said. He decided that if Malfoy was going to treat this as a casual conversation, then Harry would do the same thing. "I can't believe you missed the public scandal a year ago when that Mind-Healer I tried to see decided that she could get a better price for selling my secrets than I was prepared to pay to her."

Malfoy moved his hand through the air as though scrubbing a window clean. "Not missed. Forgot about. Had more important things to notice at the time." He turned his head and locked his eyes with Harry, as though he thought Harry would challenge that statement.

Harry twitched a shoulder in response, and said nothing. He didn't know enough about Malfoy to say whether or not it was true.

But now they were on a lift, and at this hour, there weren't many other people who could share it with them. And Malfoy showed every sign of following Harry down to the Atrium and out to the Apparition point if Harry didn't say something.

Harry cleared his throat. "Was there something you wanted?"

Malfoy turned his head. Harry blinked. He had _deep _eyes, something that didn't really show up when he was talking at Harry through the fire. Intense eyes, both in their clarity and their color.

"Yes," Malfoy said. "For you to decide what _you _want, so that I can pay this debt and reach the end of the month with a clear conscience."

"Why is the end of the month so important?" Harry demanded. He drew his wand and cast an anti-eavesdropping charm from force of habit, although he seriously doubted that any of Skeeter's disciples had followed _all _her advice and become illegal Animagi to listen in to them. "You still haven't made that clear."

"It's Scorpius's birthday," Malfoy said softly. "And the thirteenth birthday has traditionally been one of some importance in our family."

Harry blinked. Sometimes he still stumbled on things about the wizarding world that made no sense, although Hermione had assured him that half of the "traditions" the pure-bloods blatted about were made-up, imaginary ways of separating themselves from Muggleborns. "You're not supposed to go into your thirteenth birthday in debt?" he ventured, because it was really the only thing that made any sense, from what Malfoy had said to him.

Malfoy shot him a long look before he straightened up and gave a clipped nod. "Yes, actually," he said. "That's part of it. I want Scorpius to have a good year before him, the first year of balance between childhood and adulthood. I don't want this hanging over his head."

Harry sighed and raked his hand through his hair. If this was real and important to Scorpius, then Al probably knew about it, and by putting off letting Malfoy pay the debt, then Harry was making Al miserable, too.

"Fine," he said. "I'll come up with some little thing, and you can give it to me, and that pays it. All right?"

"_Not _all right," Malfoy said, as the lift reached the Atrium and they stepped out. Harry shot him a quick glance and picked up the pace. Malfoy kept up with him without making it look like he was doing so, his eyes half-slitted. "It has to be something you genuinely want, Potter. Otherwise, the debt isn't canceled."

Harry paused to slap his forehead. He hoped that Malfoy would hate to be seen with someone so gauche and go away, but it seemed he wasn't to get his wish there, either. Although Malfoy's nostrils flared, he didn't stop walking or back away.

"I can't think of anything," Harry said quietly to him. "I know this probably doesn't come up often, what with your money and your connections and all, but you have _nothing _I want."

Malfoy kept studying him. He said nothing, but he followed when Harry made his way over to the Floos. Harry had decided that getting out of sight as soon as possible was preferable to Apparating.

He didn't try to prevent Malfoy from coming with him, although it was tempting. He just ducked through and spun around in his drawing room, casting a transparent, flickering shield over the doorway so that Malfoy couldn't see into the rest of his home. Harry wasn't in the mood to deal with Malfoy's cutting comments about his lack of taste tonight.

Malfoy straightened up once he was past the mantle and leaned on it, expertly avoiding the parts that always pricked Harry, as if he knew where they were. Harry wished he could do that. "I could give you a house-elf," he said.

Harry made a face. "Hermione would never let me hear the end of it. Besides, I already technically have one."

Malfoy shook his head like an irritated cat. "That's not a matter you can be _technical _on, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes back. "I don't need to explain it to you more than that," he said, and was going to continue the conversation, when two sounds interrupted him. First was his stomach growling. Harry touched it and blinked. He supposed he _had _missed lunch.

The other sound was coming from his wrist, and it wasn't going to be so easy to placate. That was the bell, telling him he had another case. Harry groaned and lifted it up to his eyes, reading the ribbon of words that unfurled. _Possible murder case in Madam Malkin's. Calling Aurors Potter, Donin, Garrett, Linger._

And Harry couldn't even bitch at them for calling him in on this, because he'd supposedly taken this day as a holiday. It was his business if he wanted to come in and clear off paperwork; it wasn't the Ministry's fault that he'd been called on a case the same night.

"You'll need to go, Malfoy," he began, looking up.

Malfoy was studying him with narrowed eyes. Harry shook his head and pushed his sleeve down over the bell. "You can't sell this secret to anyone," he said. "Even the reporters know about them now."

"I didn't see you save Scorpius's life," Malfoy said abruptly. "Why is that?"

Harry took a step forwards, herding the man towards the Floo. Malfoy went, but kept looking at him, so Harry gave in and explained. "Al wants me to stay under the Invisibility Cloak when I watch games. It disrupts the game _and _his concentration when I have seven hundred people trying to get my autograph."

Malfoy blinked. "I didn't see you when Hogwarts had that ball that was open to parents and families, either," he murmured.

Harry shrugged. "Invisibility Cloak on that one, too. At my daughter's request, this time. She could only go because one of the third-years invited her, and she wanted his focus on _her, _not her dad."

Malfoy stared at the wall for a second. Harry gave up on politeness and shoved him towards the Floo this time.

Malfoy gave him a very faint smile and said, "I think I may have something. But I need the night to think about it. I'll firecall you in the morning."

Harry shook his head. "Better make it two days. The chances that I'll be both home and coherent in the morning are extremely small."

Malfoy opened his mouth as if to ask why, but Harry shoved him again, and Malfoy sniffed and vanished in a whirl of Floo powder. He did cast one glance over his shoulder at Harry before he did, though, intent and assessing. Despite that, Harry thought, he probably arrived at home without stumbling.

Harry couldn't give it too much thought. Life-debts might be the most important thing to Malfoy, but right now, Harry had to think of a life that had just ended.

"Madam Malkin's!" he called, and vanished into the rush of flame.

When he came out into a room that stank of blood, he already knew this would be his least favorite kind of case: the gory ones.

_Well. Not much you can do about that._

Harry calmed his stomach, settled his spirit, and strode forwards to take charge. That was what the others felt most comfortable with, and it was the way the case got solved the fastest, so it was what he had to do.


	4. Matters of Flesh and Blood

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Matters of Flesh and Blood_

"Auror Potter? Are you all right?"

Harry let his eyes flutter open, and straightened, nodding in front of him before he realized that the voice had come from the side. He turned with a sheepish smile and found Auror Kristin Garrett regarding him with her eyebrows raised high enough to look like clouds.

"Sorry, yes," he said. "I'm not as able to be up all night anymore as you youngsters are." He reached for the cup of tea that she held out to him, and glanced bleakly around the bloody room. They had spent the last nine hours here, studying the blood patterns, trying to identify the spells that had made them. There was so little left of a body that they didn't yet know who had died. Auror Linger had tried to argue that it could be suicide, but Harry and Garrett and Donin had all stared him down, and he had slinked away muttering sulkily about how they _couldn't _decide anything, with a body missing.

Garrett snorted, her blonde hair dangling over her shoulders as she conducted a sweep of the room with her own eyes. "Oh, please, sir. You're only five years older than I am."

"And you don't have any kids," Harry said, knuckling sleep out of his eyes. "Trust me, that makes the difference."

Garrett grinned at him. "Yeah, I can see it does."

Harry smiled, stood up straighter, and turned around. Auror Gisella Donin stood up at once and waved a hand at him. Harry made his way to her side, not really trusting that she had found enough to declare the scene a murder beyond doubt, but vaguely interested anyway.

Donin pointed down at a notch in the wooden floor. "Have you ever seen anything like that before, sir?"

Harry obediently knelt down to look. He had to close his eyes when he saw the blood splashed around the notch; it was no wonder none of them had spotted it before now. The blood was…rather eye-catching.

He no longer burned with the same fire that used to make Auror work almost _fun, _a hunt, a chase, but he had eighteen years of experience now, and he could feel it swinging into place in his mind, forming a structure that could support any conclusions he cared to draw. He opened his eyes again and bent towards the notch ready to observe and catalogue first, and theorize only afterwards.

This time, he could see the odd shape of the notch, as though someone had stamped straight down into the floor with a triangular boot, and the dark particles scattered around it. Harry controlled the impulse to stretch his hand out and feel the particles, which appeared to be grainy and gritty, some kind of powder. He had no idea what it was yet or whether it could harm him.

He enchanted a grain to hover in front of him instead, one near the outside of the pattern, so he would disturb less of it. He recoiled a little when he got a hint of the smell it carried with it. Thick, musty, like rotting rodent. He moved his wand in an elementary detection spell, ready to follow it up with stronger ones in an instant. These spells almost never had any result on anything compl—

The grain burst into dazzling flashes, all of them dark, all of them blinding. Harry flung a hand up in front of his eyes, shouted a warning to the others and heard them raise shields, and rolled on the floor an instant before the grain shot over his head and embedded itself in the far wall. Then he tucked himself behind a Shield Charm and saw nothing more for a while.

When he was sure that the building wasn't going to burn down around them, he lowered the shield and cautiously stood up.

The grain had landed in the far wall at head-height. And—Harry nearly smiled. There were more dark grains around a notch the same size as the one in the floor.

"Contact the Unspeakables," he told Garrett, not taking his eyes off the notch. "We have an unknown Dark artifact on our hands."

* * *

The chiming of the Floo woke him up at noon.

Harry stumbled out of bed still wearing his Auror robes. He didn't remember hitting the pillow when he got home; hell, he barely remembered _getting _home. And he'd only had two hours' sleep, given that he'd been at the murder scene all night and then there an extra hour answering the Unspeakables' questions. Whoever was at the Floo, Ginny or Malfoy or his superiors or all three, they'd just have to deal with seeing him in his robes.

But the face that appeared in the fire, faintly smiling, was Neville's. "Hello, Harry. I'm afraid that we have a bit of a situation here." The smile disappeared a second later. "What is going _on_? You look awful."

Harry smiled back at his friend and flopped down on the floor in front of the fire, not in the mood to bother with chairs. "A murder case. Now, tell me. Is it Al or Jamie? You're smiling, so it can't be worse than a broken arm."

Neville cleared his throat. "No, it isn't. At least, physically it isn't."

"But morally?" Neville nodded, and Harry let his head fall back and a groan well out of his throat, knowing Neville would understand. "So, let me guess. It's Jamie and his ingredients-stealing ways, isn't it?"

"Yes," Neville said, and said no more, because Harry was waving his arms around and complaining the same old set of complaints. At this point, the words were almost a ritual between them, another one Harry knew Neville didn't mind.

"Did _I _ask to have a Potions prodigy for a son?" Harry asked the ceiling. "No, I did _not_. Did _I _ask to have Jamie get so interested in ingredients that he thinks he needs to steal what he can't buy, beg, or borrow? No, I did not." He lowered his head and peered mournfully at Neville. "I swear, Severus Snape is laughing at me from beyond the grave."

Neville held his hand over his mouth for a second, then lowered it and gave in to his own laugh. "Remind me not to tell you what his portrait said."

Harry rolled his eyes, but felt guilt like sand settle into his stomach. He forgot, continually, that Snape had a portrait at the school that he could go and visit. Somehow, he never made the time, and now it had been more than ten years since their last conversation. The same with Dumbledore. Something…always made it seem more convenient to put that last confrontation off.

He tried to hurry past it now. There was no reason to let Neville in on that particular litany of complaints about himself. "What did he steal?"

"A Mandrake."

Harry let his head fall forwards into his hands. "Which has so very many uses," he muttered.

Neville was nodding when Harry glanced up again. "We did rather wonder what he wanted it for."

"Did he say?"

Neville shook his head. "No. Said he would serve his detention like a student should. And he was sincerely sorry about the students that the Mandrake's scream knocked unconscious when he was carrying it into Gryffindor Tower."

Harry relaxed a little. "So, it had to be young, then." Not that he thought Neville wouldn't have let him know at once if Jamie had been stealing a mature Mandrake, whose scream would be fatal, but it made some part of him that had been tightly clenched in anticipation of exactly that bad news unwind.

"It was," Neville said, grinning a little at Harry. "Barely out of childhood. But he won't tell us what potion he intended to brew. I contacted you because you got him to confess what he was doing when he stole that boomslang skin."

"That was a lucky guess," Harry muttered. He had known it had to be Polyjuice Potion—he remembered that particular ingredient well—but he had never found out who Jamie had been planning to impersonate.

Of course, knowing Jamie, he might not have been intending to cause mischief. He made potions for the pure joy of them, and just being able to brew something could have been enough.

Harry sighed. Yes, in many ways Jamie was easy. He would smile at you and accept the detention, and admit he was wrong, and fulfill his punishments almost cheerfully, and play with his younger siblings, and be sympathetic about his parents' divorce without demanding that they get back together. He was perfectly content with a few simple potions ingredients and vials and cauldrons. He just wouldn't _listen_. He nodded along with Harry's lectures, or Ginny's, then went off and quietly did things his own way.

"Shall I come through?" he added, when Neville didn't vanish from the fire.

"It might be best," Neville said. "Jamie said that he would prefer to talk to you over his mother."

Harry started a little. Jamie had never said something like that before. Until recently, he and Ginny had handled Jamie's little crises together, and then on alternating weeks. Harry had assumed Neville had firecalled him because Jamie had told him it was his week, not because Jamie wanted him.

_What have I been ignoring, while I got all wrapped up in work and the divorce? _Harry asked himself, as he hastily went back into his bedroom and threw on more casual clothes. Someone other than the people who knew he was coming might see him in Hogwarts and panic if he went there in official Auror robes.

_My children. As per usual._

With a heavy heart, Harry went back into the drawing room and Flooed to Hogwarts.

* * *

"I have private theories."

That was one of Jamie's most frequent responses, but it didn't make Harry feel better right now. He took off his glasses and rubbed the center of his forehead, where he could feel a headache forming. It usually did that with too little sleep and too much worry. And when was the last time he had had something to eat besides the tea Garrett had fed him?

He couldn't remember. It didn't matter. He had more important things to worry about right now.

"All right," Harry said, and pushed his glasses back up his nose before he scowled hard at his son. Jamie sat on a bed in the hospital wing. He'd been exposed to the Mandrake's scream, too, although he'd only fallen unconscious for thirty minutes. Harry thought Neville was more mandating keeping him here because it was a way to ensure that he _stayed put. _"But look at it this way. Did all the students who heard the Mandrake scream know about your, uh, private theories?"

Jamie blinked at him, then bowed his head and seemed to concentrate. "No," he finally said. "They didn't."

Harry nodded encouragingly to him. "And that means that…?"

"I shouldn't ask them to participate in my experiments?" Jamie phrased it as a question, looking up from beneath his fringe. Harry _willed _himself not to melt, and nodded again. The times when Jamie could come to the conclusions Harry wanted him to reach on his own rather than be lectured into them were always best.

"Right. You can only ask someone to participate with full knowledge of what the experiment entails. Or what happens if someone does something wrong, and you don't know if it was because the experiment is dangerous or because they just didn't know what they _should _do?" Harry had been reading a bit about Potions theory recently, because of his case before this latest one. He hoped that it might help him reach Jamie.

Jamie frowned mightily. "You're right," he said. "I should have known better."

Harry smiled at him, and reached out to pat his son's knee.

"Next time, I won't take the Mandrake to Gryffindor Tower."

_Fine. _Harry hated getting like this with any of his children, but Jamie was the one most likely to respond—sometimes, if he was in the right mood. He frowned back at Jamie in turn and leaned nearer. "If you take another Mandrake from the greenhouses, it's likely that you could be expelled," he said harshly. "The Mandrake's scream could have _killed _someone, Jamie! Do you realize that?"

Jamie cocked his head. "But only mature Mandrakes do that. This one was young."

Harry was reminded of the way that Jamie had begun finding factual errors in the fairy tales Harry read him when he was _three_. Harry resisted the urge to bang his head against the walls, which would only slosh the few brains he still possessed around in his skull, and then bent forwards and said as plainly as he could, "I don't think Professor Longbottom is going to care about the difference. You haven't been expelled so far because they know that you're a very good student in other ways, and you're my son, and Professor Longbottom's my friend. But that won't last if you keep stealing Mandrakes."

"If they would let me have Mandrakes when I asked, then I wouldn't need to steal them," Jamie said, for the first time sounding a little plaintive. He kicked his heels against the side of the infirmary bed and ducked down so that he was peering at Harry through his brilliant red fringe. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone, Dad, but it's so _boring, _how they hold us back, when I know that I can go faster!"

Harry patted his son's shoulder. "I know, Jamie," he said quietly. "But we said that you didn't have to go to Hogwarts if you didn't want to. You could have had private schooling for a few years, or gone to Durmstrang, and then taken on an apprenticeship with a Potions master. But you chose Hogwarts instead."

Jamie shivered a little. He said something too low for Harry to hear. Harry left his hand on his shoulder and said, "Repeat that, please."

"I don't want to be _different _." Jamie lifted his head stubbornly. "I know Hogwarts is supposed to have a great education in everything else, even if they can't teach me anything about Potions. I wanted to go here. I just wish everyone didn't look at me as if I was stupid for being different."

"You want to be different and you want to be normal at the same time?" Harry asked gently.

Jamie blinked at him. "Yes," he said, thought a minute, and then added, "But it sounds really stupid when you put it that way."

Harry laughed. "I felt the same way when I was at school," he said. "I enjoyed the attention for things like winning at Quidditch, but then there were times when I wished everyone would stop staring at me and gossiping about me being the Boy-Who-Lived."

"How did you deal with it?" Jamie had wriggled forwards to the edge of the bed, stretching out on his stomach. Harry sighed in envy. _Youth. _His days of being able to do that easily were long gone.

"Lived with it," Harry said. "Muddled along. I didn't have any grand plan. I wasn't smart like you." He ruffled Jamie's hair, then added, "But even though I thought it was unfair when I got into trouble, I was smart enough to realize that what I was doing _could _get me into trouble. And I never even stole a Mandrake."

Jamie grinned. "You stole boomslang skin, though."

"I never should have told you that story." Harry pinched his earlobe. "Now. I think this really is the last time, Jamie. Professor Longbottom is indulgent, but other students got in danger this time, and when their parents hear about that, the school will get a lot of Howlers. Some of them will think that you only weren't expelled because you were my son. _Please _don't do that anymore."

Jamie nodded solemnly. "All right. I won't. I don't want you to get in trouble. I'll just have to find some other way to brew that potion."

Harry almost opened his mouth to ask, "What potion?" but he knew that Jamie would look at him patiently, and not tell him anything. And he probably wouldn't be able to understand the answer even if Jamie _did _give him one. He sighed and stood up. "And you won't do anything else that could get you in trouble, either?"

Jamie kicked up his heels and grinned. "I won't do anything _on purpose. _But not even you could keep out of trouble all the time."

"I suppose that's true enough," Harry said, and kissed Jamie quickly on the top of the head before he could duck. Then he left the hospital wing, grinning at Jamie's apparent attempts to get the spit off his hair behind him.

He met Neville in the corridor. Neville raised his eyebrows at him. Harry nodded slightly. "I think he'll be all right."

"Thank you for getting through to him, Harry." Neville squeezed his arm. "Do you have time for a cup of tea before you go back home?"

A yawn interrupted Harry's attempt at a response, and he shook his head. "Don't want to stain your tables by falling asleep in the middle of the cup," he mumbled.

Neville's chuckle followed him back home, and into his bedroom, and nearly followed him into a mindless collapse into sleep, but there was another sound that quickly interrupted the memory. The chime of the Floo connection.

Harry groaned from the bottom of his heart, but he knew that he didn't have the ability to ignore it, especially if it was from Ginny or something about the case—although if it was the Aurors, they'd contact him by his wrist-bell. He stumbled back to his feet and out into the drawing room again, glad that he hadn't taken off his clothes yet.

Malfoy's face floated in the flames. Harry sighed. "I was up all night on a case, and then I got two hours of sleep before I got called to the next crisis," he whined. "Can't it wait?"

"Not when I've found the perfect means to pay our debt," Malfoy said. And the whipcord excitement in his voice convinced Harry it was true.

"Come through, then," Harry said, resigned, moving out of the way and waving his wand to readjust the wards on the Floo.

Malfoy stepped through gracefully and quickly, brushed off the lone particle of soot that dared to cling to his robe, and focused on Harry. Harry winced. The stare was the kind that made him want to check that there was no spinach in his teeth.

"It's obvious enough that your life is a mess," Malfoy announced haughtily. "With your divorce, your children insisting that you conceal yourself beneath an Invisibility Cloak because they can't deal with your fame, the _obscene _hours you work—"

"_Don't _you accuse my kids—" Harry began.

Malfoy ignored that magnificently. "You need someone who can set your life in order and do it _perfectly_," he said. "That way, the next small random crisis can't rearrange everything. That person needs to be on call for a few weeks. That's how long it should take, if you have the _perfect _rearranger. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized only one person fits that criteria." He smiled glintingly at Harry. "Me."

He snapped his fingers, and two trunks leaped out of his pockets and resized themselves on the floor. He turned to Harry. "Where's my bedroom?"


	5. A Malfoy Who Will Not Leave

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—A Malfoy Who Won't Leave_

"Look. You can't stay here."

Harry was proud of himself. His voice didn't shake with fury, and he didn't attack Malfoy with either a punch or a curse. Malfoy didn't look impressed, but Harry hadn't expected he would. He had only thought he would sniff, turn around, and walk back through the Floo.

Malfoy stood there, arms tolerantly crossed. "Why not?" he asked. "You have the room."

"No, I _don't_," Harry snapped. He was glad that he didn't feel the same obligations to Malfoy that he did to other people, because that would keep Harry from showing his temper with him, and he thought being horrible and ungracious was the only way to get Malfoy to leave. "I have two bedrooms here, and one is mine and one is my daughter's. Plus I'm supposed to have her this weekend. _You can't be here._"

Malfoy rocked a little on his heels in the face of Harry's voice. Harry held his breath. That would work, wouldn't it? He wouldn't have to resort to curses, would he?

Then Malfoy said, "That's obviously the first thing that needs to change. No room for guests, not even those red-haired mustelids you call friends? That's one reason that you have no life." He took out his wand.

Harry was faster. Malfoy looked at the wand leveled at him and cocked his head, as if Harry was a strange animal who wasn't behaving according to the rules for its species. "Why do you want me to go?" Malfoy asked. "This is the means I've chosen of paying the debt, and you can't fairly object to it, the way you did to the other payments I tried to arrange."

Harry rubbed his face. He caught a glimpse of Malfoy's sneer of disgust, probably because he had smeared at least a little snot and sleep around. Well, good. Maybe that would contribute to Malfoy deciding that he _didn't need to be here right now. _"You're going to make my life more difficult, not better," Harry said evenly. "I need this weekend to focus on my daughter, and whatever time I can get away from my job to help my children and try to be a better dad. Not to—not to entertain you."

Malfoy's jaw dropped a little. "I wasn't counting on you to entertain me," he said. "I brought more than enough books for that." He patted one of the trunks. "No, what I want to do is enlarge your house so that you have enough room for me and for guests, and then perhaps you might have a life."

"What do you think my daughter is going to think, when she comes and finds _you _here?" Harry asked quietly. "She'll think that I'm once again not focusing enough on her, that I don't care about what she wants."

"I can help you find out what she wants," Malfoy offered. "I know how to act with witches, and you don't."

Harry cast him a glance that he hoped was withering, although since Malfoy kept standing there, it obviously didn't work as well as Harry had hoped. "_Lily _isn't the kind of fashion-obsessed pure-blood witch you've lived with, Malfoy," he snapped.

"You shouldn't speak about my mother or my wife until you know them," Malfoy said. "Which I hope won't happen, frankly. If I have to bring in help to straighten your life out, you're worse off than I thought."

"I'm worse off than you can _imagine_," Harry said. "You're not bringing anyone in. You're not bringing yourself in. Leave."

"But I have to pay this life-debt," Malfoy said. "By the end of the month. Or Scorpius turns thirteen with that hanging over his head, and there's a chance that he might have to pay you for his life later. I won't have that happen."

Harry shut his eyes. _Damn it. _So it was live with Malfoy for a few weeks and risk disappointing and alienating Lily, or forbid Malfoy to help him and risk disappointing and alienating Al, who would be upset that his friend couldn't go through an important ceremony the way he wanted to.

Well. There were still a few days until the weekend, and Lily's arrival. That meant Harry had time to write an owl to Al and ask how important this was to Scorpius. Harry had assumed it must matter to Scorpius if it mattered to his father, but he should know better than anyone that the father's preoccupations often weren't shared by the children.

"Fine," he said. "You can have my bed. I'll sleep on the couch." He turned to wave his wand and enlarge the couch near the Floo.

"Are you mad?" Malfoy said, taking a step towards him. Harry assumed that was a rhetorical question, but Malfoy continued. "You look ready to collapse, and you'll probably go out on your job and get yourself killed in this condition, leaving me with no way to pay back the debt. Plus anyone calling on the Floo can reach you if you're here, and you need to sleep, not speak to people."

Harry stared at him, but Malfoy seemed immune to irony. "Take your bed," Malfoy continued, pushing Harry towards his bedroom. "You have a corner of your drawing room that leads off to the outside of the house, I can see that. That's where I'll put my room."

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Malfoy had cast a nasty little spell, nonverbally, that Harry only recognized when he felt the effects stealing over him. It made his eyelids droop and the air in his chest feel loose and warm, then rush out to expand all over his limbs. Harry tried to object, but he couldn't.

Then there was a pillow beneath his head, and blankets pulled up and over him, and he was utterly gone.

* * *

_Malfoy is a berk._

At least Harry woke clear-headed enough from the nasty, underhanded sleep spell that that was his first thought.

He rolled over, making sure that his movements were smooth, the same ones he would use if he was waking up from a sleeping spell cast by an enemy, so that he could waste the least amount of time. He cast a _Tempus _Charm, and then cast another that would print the current date beside the time.

Seven-o'clock in the evening. The same day.

Harry closed eyes that were too heavy to hold open for a second, then stood and cast a Cleaning Charm on his robes. He wasn't about to waste time washing them. Malfoy—if he was still here and hadn't gone to the shops for food that suited his stuck-up tastes—didn't _deserve _the acknowledgment of clean robes.

He strode towards the kitchen, realizing even as he did that his earlier thought had been ridiculous. Malfoy wouldn't go to the shops, he would send a house-elf for what he needed.

Malfoy was in the kitchen, all right, sitting at the table and sipping tea that had a delicate, precise smell from a tiny porcelain cup Harry _knew _he didn't own. In front of him was a long scroll on rolls of wood that smelled like cedar. He made a small grimace of disappointment as Harry came in, and scratched out one of the many tiny items on the list.

"Get out of my house," Harry said, halting in front of the table. He had already made his mind up about what spells he would use.

"No," Malfoy said. He leaned back and watched Harry from a critical distance. "Would you describe your current relationship with your ex-wife as a problem that needs to be solved, or an inconvenience that you can put up with?"

Harry snapped his wrist down, hissing the spell out between his teeth. It made the wards that usually guarded the exterior part of the house show up right here, inside, thus pushing Malfoy through the walls and into the street.

Malfoy caught his breath as Harry's magic washed over him, but the force of the power stunned Harry—by dissipating. When the spell passed over and Malfoy should have been gone, flung through the wall, he still sat at the table. Even the tiny porcelain cup hadn't been harmed.

"Oh, poor fool," Malfoy murmured, when he'd had time to catch his breath. Harry hated to be caught staring at his wand, but that was the way it was, and he jerked his head up to glare. Malfoy just sat there, one hand stroking the side of the cup with the tips, only, of his fingers. "You ought to have known that you can't do that with someone you owe a life-debt to. At least, not someone who's in the process of paying you back."

"What do you _mean_?" Harry hit the back of the nearest chair with his wand. He was pleased when the chair became a goat the way he'd meant it to, and promptly tried to eat his shirt. Another whack of the wand Transfigured it back into a chair. "This isn't something I want!"

"Yes, it is." Malfoy's eyebrows crept a few inches higher on that perfect face. "You want your life to be calm again, and you want to have better relationships with your children and your wife, and more time for yourself. You just don't want _me _to be the one providing it."

Harry swore at him.

"Release of tension," Malfoy said, and wrote a new word on his scroll-list. "That's another thing we need to provide for you. Tell me, do you meditate?"

"Listen," Harry said, leaning forwards so that this time the chair creaked under his touch, "I don't _need _this. I need to focus on my children. I need to make them the center of my life again. I've let my job become too important. I know what I need to do, I just have to get the will and the time together and actually _do _it."

"You need help," Malfoy finished, nodding. "But your children aren't the only things in your life. Your ex-wife is, as well. I just need to know whether you want to get back together with her or achieve a cordial, distant relationship with her."

Harry laughed in spite of himself; he'd never thought he'd heard Draco Malfoy say the word "relationship." "Why? Is that the sort of thing you have with your wife?"

"You won't speak of her." Malfoy's voice was low enough that Harry felt it more than heard it, a throb in his veins. "But to answer your question, yes, we are cordial. We don't fight or argue. Scorpius has what he needs from both of us."

"And what made you divorce?" Harry decided to press ahead. If he couldn't force Malfoy out of his house with magic, doing it with words was the next best option. "You don't have a job, so it couldn't have been spending all your time away on it, the way it was with me and Ginny. Does your coldness extend to the bedroom?"

Malfoy was on his feet, flashing into fire, and flashing across the distance between them, before Harry could draw his wand. But he had Auror instincts that caught up then, and he was still the trained one, while Malfoy wasn't. Harry whirled once, to the side, and captured Malfoy with the bastard's throat against his wand.

"Listen," Harry whispered to him. "I won't say that kind of thing to you if you'll leave now. I don't want this gift that you're going to give me. Find something else to give me. The next weak or stupid thing you come up with, I'll happily accept."

Malfoy half-turned his head. He had gone cold again, the flush already fading from his cheeks. "Listen to me," he whispered in return. "You aren't going to cajole or threaten me into leaving. I've already made my decision that this is what I want to give you, and it's something you need, and the only reason that you're trying to persuade me to leave is that you don't like someone else prying into your life."

"Would you?" Harry countered.

"If my life was as much of a mess as yours is," Malfoy said, stepping back and laying a hand on his throat as he watched Harry, "then I'd be glad of the intervention."

Harry shook his head. "I told you, I know what I need to do. My children have to be the focus of my life."

"The way your job was in your marriage?" Malfoy murmured. "You know as well as I do that that won't work. You're an adult. Your world can't always revolve around your children. You _have _to care about other things, like paying your bills. And your debts." His smile slid into Harry's confusion like a thin knife around the edge of a door. "You didn't give up your job when it cost you your marriage. What makes you think you would give it up now?"

"I changed my mind about the Galleons you offered me," Harry snapped. "Give me the money, and I'll retire from the Aurors for a while and concentrate on my children."

Malfoy shook his head. "That wouldn't improve things. It just gives you more hours to sit across the room and stare helplessly at your brats."

"_Don't insult my children_." Harry was astonished to discover how much of the way he spoke came from hurt, as though Malfoy had plunged another of those thin knives into his belly.

"Your oldest child is a thief," Malfoy continued. "Your youngest is a brat so famous that there's jokes out there about hiring her if you want a banshee."

Harry shook his head again, not understanding. "Why would anyone think that about Lily? She's not—she doesn't have tantrums like that."

"It only takes three or four in Diagon Alley for a child to get a reputation." Malfoy folded his arms. "And your middle child, although on the surface more respectful, makes you hide under an Invisibility Cloak when he wants to see you. Why is his embarrassment at your fame more important than your right to come and watch his Quidditch games?"

Harry felt as though someone had encircled him with burning sticks and now was poking them at him repeatedly. He shook his head, dazed, drunk. He wanted Malfoy to go away, and he wanted the answers to the questions, and he wasn't going to get both things at the same time. He had to remember what was most important here, his children, and not let himself be dazzled by all the words that Malfoy flung at him. Harry wasn't that great with words, but he hoped that he could be good with actions.

"It's practical for me to stay under the Cloak," Harry said, deciding the most important thing to do right now was defend Al's decisions. "Otherwise, people keep mobbing me for autographs, and they take attention away from the game."

"Meaning that your son isn't admired the way he should be." Malfoy's smile was a slow, sleepy thing, and slid along his lips too softly. "How sad for him."

"_Your _son wouldn't be admired, either, if everyone was looking at me," Harry retorted sharply. "I thought that meant you would want me to stay under the Cloak."

"What you're doing is ridiculous," Malfoy said. Harry opened his mouth to ask which of the many, many crimes he had committed according to Malfoy was the ridiculous one, but Malfoy struck straight past him, at what he obviously thought was the heart of it. "This attempt to shrink yourself down and be what they all want. What _everyone _wants. The perfect father—but not Harry Potter, who's famous. The understanding father who never has to discipline his children—but someone who has perfect children at the same time. The close husband—but the great Auror. You've never learned to say no to anyone who asks you for something, and it's _painfully _obvious that's where your problems come from."

"How many times do I have to say no to you?"

Unexpectedly, Malfoy smiled. "It's a good beginning, that you recognize you don't have to do everything someone wants just because he has a claim on you," he said. "And your divorce was another one. You couldn't reconcile the demands of your job and your wife, so in the end you chose one."

Harry just stared at him.

"I'm here to help you learn how to say no," Malfoy continued. He caught Harry's gaze, and it was like being subjected to a burning beam focused through a prism. "You hate me right now, but I don't want you to love me. Spend three weeks with me, until the end of the month, and I promise, you'll have a better life than you do right now."

Harry took a deep breath. He still hated the way Malfoy had marched in here and insulted his kids and Ginny and told Harry that everything he did was wrong.

But…

It was true that, in all the months and years he had been promising himself he would, he had never sat down and focused on his children.

It was true that Harry had no idea how to give Lily what she wanted, and James was a thief, and Al was great but kept asking for things that made Harry feel as if Al cared more about avoiding Harry's fame than having Harry watch his Quidditch games.

It was true that being an Auror consumed his life, and he didn't want it to.

"You promise that you'll do that?" he asked Malfoy, in a voice that sounded odd to his own ears. "You won't stop until you do?"

Malfoy reached out and placed a hand on top of Harry's arm, pressing without closing his fingers, until Harry thought there would be a bruise from the pressure alone. He nodded.

"I can be persuasive when I want to, and determined when I want to, and strong when I want to," Malfoy said, barely moving his lips. "And my son matters more to me than anything in the world."

Harry didn't see the relevance of that last statement for a bit, until he remembered Malfoy saying that he was doing this to fulfill Scorpius's life-debt. In a strange way, Harry was now under the same protection as Scorpius, at least until the month was up.

And even stranger, that was a comforting thought.


	6. Learning to Say No

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Learning to Say No_

Harry tore open the letter from Al when it arrived. He had written to him not long after that little speech Malfoy had made him, which sounded less convincing and less hypnotic when Malfoy went to the loo. How could someone from the outside, who relieved himself and drank tea and had to deal with his family like any other mortal, understand the tangle that enveloped Harry and his children?

He couldn't. It was that simple. He might try, but he knew even less than Harry did about the tempers of his children—witness the insulting comments he had made about Lily—and that meant this effort was doomed to failure, another thing Harry had tried to do that would end up disappointing the people he loved most in the world.

But Al had written back at once, which meant that Harry's letter must have arrived before he went to bed. His writing sprawled so much it was hard to read. Harry squinted and tilted the parchment into the light.

_Dear Dad, _

_I think it's a brilliant thing that Mr. Malfoy chose to pay back the life-debt that way! Scorpius needs to be free of it when he has his thirteenth birthday, and that's only a few weeks away, you know. So it's important._

_Al._

Harry sighed and lowered the letter to the table again. So this letter left him in the same position as before. He had to allow Malfoy to help him for Al's sake, but avoid getting Lily mad at him at the same time.

"Have you eaten anything since you awoke?"

Harry started and looked up. Malfoy was back from his second trip to the bathroom in four hours, sitting down on the other side of the table again. Harry grimaced and shook his head. It was eleven now, he'd woken at seven and written to Al not long after his strange conversation with Malfoy, and he'd spent the rest of the time listening to Malfoy tell him about things that needed to happen.

"That's one thing that needs to change," Malfoy said, in the same calm, unscathed voice that he had used to talk about all the _other _things in Harry's life that needed to change, too. "The lack of care you take of yourself. You'd had, what, perhaps two hours of sleep this morning when I called? Because you'd dealt with Auror crises, and then a crisis with your son at Hogwarts. It's ridiculous that you expected to Transfigure your sofa and then sleep next to your Floo."

"Listen," Harry said, leaning forwards, "I always get enough sleep and food in the end. That's not something you need to worry about."

Malfoy turned around in his chair, face so solemn that Harry had no idea what spell he was casting as he flicked his wand. The doors of Harry's cabinets and cupboards fell open. Harry glanced at them, frowning. He didn't think even Malfoy could disapprove of his neatness. All the contents were neatly organized.

"What?" he added, when he realized the flat way Malfoy was staring at him.

"You have almost _no food_ here," Malfoy said. "Yes, you get enough sleep and food in the end. But how often have you picked up very few supplies because you were Apparating or Flooing in a haze of weariness, and you simply forgot?"

Harry flushed. "I'm not always tired when I go to the shops," he said, because he had to, the same way a bird would protest and flutter with a big snake staring at it. "Last time, I just didn't pick up much because I was afraid that I wouldn't be here when Lily got here."

"And not earning her disapproval is the center of your existence." Malfoy watched him with eyes like a basking lizard's this time. Harry wondered why in the world he was bothering to make a difference in his mind between lizards and snakes when it came to Malfoy's eyes, and then why he was looking at him at all, and turned determinedly back to his tea. "Strange that you're so bad at it, with so much practice."

Harry snarled and leaned forwards. "I've told you before to _shut up_."

Malfoy shook his head a little. "Why should I? These are the truths that you need to hear. What is it about your daughter that puzzles you?"

Harry hesitated, then said, "I don't listen to her often enough. She wanted one kind of broom for her birthday, and I got her a different one. I know the divorce has been hard on her, and she feels that I don't pay enough attention to her. I'm always rushing off on a case when I've promised a day to her."

Malfoy nodded and wrote something down on that damnable scroll that was covered with God knew how many scratches at this point. "Then part of what you need to do, to please her, is to learn to say no to your bosses."

Harry cleared his throat. "But they put me on kidnapping and murder cases. This last one is especially bad. If I—if I stay home, how do I know that someone wouldn't die that I could save?"

Malfoy looked at him in silence. Then he stood up and moved to the open cupboard on the wall opposite. Harry watched with a beating heart, wondering if he had found the combination of words that would drive Malfoy away at last, and how he had managed it.

And if he really wanted Malfoy to leave.

Malfoy reached into the back of the cupboard and twisted his hand to the side. With it came a shadow, and then a door swung open and Harry realized one of his cupboards now had a false back.

He sprang to his feet. "What the _hell _did you have your house-elves do to my _house_?"

Malfoy ignored him serenely, turning around with a squat, golden-colored bottle in his hand. Harry thought it was a potion, and started to open his mouth to tell him that trusting Malfoy to teach him to say no was one thing, trusting him enough to swallow a potion he'd made was quite another.

But Malfoy opened the top of the bottle and waved it around, and the smoke funneling out of it coalesced into a meal on the table that made Harry's mouth water. The nearest plates held thick sandwiches that dripped with lettuce and meat and cheese. The ones further back held tumbling masses of pudding and treacle tart and potatoes that looked as if they were ready to burst out of their skins with butter. And there was a glass of pumpkin juice at his elbow.

"Eat," Malfoy said, sitting down. "This is a little trick that I usually save for myself when I've had a hard day, but I don't think you've had anything to eat all day, and it's affecting your brain. As evidenced by the idiotic arguments you're making."

"I did so," Harry muttered as he picked up a sandwich. He nearly passed out from the first taste of ripe tomato he got, but managed to scowl at Malfoy around his munching. "I had tea."

"That's so nourishing," Malfoy said, with a flatness that Harry could grow to hate. He turned to his list. "And if you're worried about the modifications that my elves have made to the house, I suggest that you not go into my bedroom."

Harry munched, and scowled.

"You needed food in your stomach to understand what I have to say to you." Malfoy leaned forwards so slowly that it looked as though his chin would touch the table before he spoke again. But in the end, he was just staring, very directly, into Harry's eyes, and Harry was biting his lower lip to keep from gaping.

"It is _not your fault _if someone random dies because you weren't there," Malfoy said. "I can think of circumstances where it would be if it wasn't someone random, particularly for an Auror. If you abandoned your assigned partner and ran away because you had a good lead, and your partner died because you weren't there to protect them, then yes, it would be. Or if you promised a witness protection and then didn't meet them at the time and place you specified. But how can you be responsible for children who died because of a kidnapping or murder that you didn't prevent? That's _ridiculous. _Your _absence _removes you from responsibility."

"But I'm good with kidnapping cases," Harry said, and realized to his astonishment that he sounded like he was pleading. "I can usually solve them, and get the kidnapped person back, before anyone gets hurt."

"Usually," Malfoy said, picking the word up with the delicacy he would a crushed Potions ingredient. "That doesn't mean it always happens, does it?"

Harry shook his head reluctantly. "Sometimes they come back hurt. Sometimes the kidnappers die before they can tell us where they took their victim. Sometimes we don't even find a body."

Malfoy nodded. "Then the first part of your statement was accurate. You are good with kidnapping cases, and it makes sense that your superiors would want you on them. It makes no sense to blame yourself for the ones that you can't work, either because you were assigned elsewhere or because you have a normal life like everyone else."

Harry swallowed slowly. The words made more sense, said in that dry, detached tone, than they ever had when Ron or Hermione had said them.

But then he remembered something else, something Malfoy had failed to account for, and his stomach squirmed with a mixture of triumph and guilt.

"You think only someone like me would blame me?" he asked, and took another bite of his sandwich.

"Yes," Malfoy said.

So much certainty, and so _wrong_. Harry rolled his eyes at him. "But the others think the same thing. The other Aurors, I mean," he added, when Malfoy closed his eyes as though Harry's lack of precision in language hurt him. "When I haven't been there, they tell me about the people who were hurt because I wasn't there."

"Then they're fools as well," Malfoy said unhesitatingly. "Why don't they blame the people who _were _there and presumably missed connections and clues?"

Harry paused. Then he said, "Well, they do. I mean, there's always lectures about how we could do better, and we break every failed case down and talk in detail about what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future."

"But how many other Aurors get personal lectures?" Malfoy still had his eyes closed, but now they seemed to share the thin smile that his mouth wore. "How many of them get told it was their _fault _for sleeping in or playing with their children, that someone else didn't get rescued?"

"Most people didn't say that to me," Harry said.

"Then I'm a loss to know why you think they blame you." Malfoy was examining him with nonchalant interest, eyes open now, hand cupping his chin.

"The _looks_," Harry said. "And conversations that I'm not supposed to overhear. Well, all right, I'm supposed to overhear _part _of them," he added, as Malfoy's eyebrows rose. Even Harry had to admit that he wasn't all that practiced in the stealth that was necessary to real eavesdropping. "And people telling me when they hand me case files that they hope this time, everyone gets to come home safe." He shrugged. Now that he came to tell someone else, it sounded thin, and maybe Malfoy would tell him that what he _really _needed to learn how to do was stop attributing motives to people that they didn't have.

But Malfoy had sat up like a serpent coiling to strike, and he looked at Harry for a long second before he inclined his head. "I understand," he said, words bright, sparking. "You need not explain further."

"Er, all right?" Harry took another bite of sandwich, and had to admit Malfoy had been right about something else. He was starving. "I just don't really see what you can do to stop something so diffuse."

"Stop yielding to everyone," Malfoy said. "They think that they can impose on you and play on your guilt and you don't mind it because you never _object. _The same way that your children don't realize that you hate some of the things they do because you never _say so. _And how silent did you stay on the subject of your job and what the people there were doing to you with your wife? Did she ever know that you wanted to spend more time at home but felt compelled to go back because your colleagues would blame you if you didn't?"

Harry's mouth hung open. Malfoy sniffed and gestured for him to close it. "If I wanted to see chewed-up cheese and meat," he said, "I would watch Scorpius while he eats."

Harry lowered the sandwich to his plate. Then he said, "You're implying—that my marriage ended because I don't know how to stand up for myself."

Malfoy shrugged. Even that motion seemed to have as much elegance and coldness as it could, given that it was a _shrug_. "You only told me one thing about how your marriage ended. This is the extrapolation I made from that. I'm sure that the ending of your marriage was more complex than that, and there were other factors involved that I know nothing about."

"Why did _yours _end?"

Malfoy's eyes were as cold as winter rain, with no transition between one state and the other. "From factors that you know nothing about."

Harry held up a hand. "Okay, okay. Forget I asked."

Malfoy sniffed once, and folded his hands in front of him. "The next time that someone wants you to come in and work extra hours on a case, or makes an exception for another Auror and not for you, call them to task. We can rehearse a speech if you like."

"The other Aurors don't get special treatment," Harry snapped back. "Maybe I get extra work, but we _all _work hard. They don't get holidays because I take over their cases."

Malfoy smiled. "Really? So there's never been a plea that someone needs to stay home because they're sick, or they have a sick relative they need to take care of, or they have a child's birthday to celebrate?"

Harry scoffed, feeling good that he could do that, and honestly. "Of _course _there has. What are you, mental? Aurors have normal lives like anyone else. I believe that was part of the point you were making," he said, and tried to imitate the poncey cadences of Malfoy's speech.

"And do you get the time off to care for your sick family members?" Malfoy asked. "Or to celebrate your children's birthdays?"

Harry felt his face flame, remembering the bell-call that had interrupted Lily's birthday party. "That was different," he muttered. "The last time I got one of those, it was an escape. I really didn't want to be there."

"And the one before that?" Malfoy could smile while he was cutting someone's throat, Harry thought, and probably had. "And the one before that? Has no one ever taken a holiday because they were _slightly _sick, or just lazy, and made you bear the burden?"

Harry stared down at his sandwich.

"I don't ask these questions for my health." Malfoy spoke with a sufficient force to have cracked the tiny porcelain cup, Harry thought, if it had been on the table. "I would like an answer."

Harry lifted his head and shook it. "I don't know," he whispered. "I couldn't _prove _anything. There were a few times I thought someone was taking advantage of me, but what was more important? Me accusing them and causing dissension in the Department, or going in and saving the innocent people who needed me?"

"The answer," Malfoy said, "is always, _always, _spending more time with your family."

Harry flung his hands up. His eyes were burning and his joints felt as though they were full of poison on fire. "Fine. I give up. You have me. What do you want me to _do _about it, Malfoy? I destroyed my own marriage. I'm weak and give in too much, because I value other children above my children. You have my confession. Are you going to go away now? Am I too weak to help?"

Malfoy regarded him in silence. Then he said, "Are the rumors true? That you went to death in the Forbidden Forest?"

Harry stared at him. Then he said, "You know they aren't. You should know better than anyone, since it was your mother who lied to Voldemort about me being dead."

"Don't be obtuse." Now that clear poison seemed to be on fire in Malfoy's eyes. "I _meant_, did you march into the Forbidden Forest thinking you were going to die? Or did you know that the Killing Curse would only slay part of the Dark Lord, and spare you?"

Harry took a swallow of air, long and slow. He couldn't imagine why Malfoy wanted to discuss this, but at least it was an old, healed wound, instead of the new ones that Malfoy had insisted on tearing open.

"I didn't know," he said at last. "I might have hoped, but I thought I was going to die." He thought about mentioning the Resurrection Stone, but there were secrets he had to keep safe for the sake of the whole world.

_Still_.

"Then you were prepared to sacrifice your life once before," Malfoy said calmly. "For the sake of people you loved, sure, but also people you didn't know, and some you quite despised." He stood up and came around the table. Harry found himself watching Malfoy from a sitting position, not wanting to rise to his feet even though it technically put him in a position of less power, to be seated while Malfoy stood.

Malfoy rested his hand on Harry's shoulder and squeezed. Harry leaned into the touch without meaning to. He just couldn't remember the last time someone had done it.

"_Don't _let anyone tell you that you're selfish because you want to spend time with your family instead of running off to spare another Auror from doing their _job_," Malfoy said, his words deep and patient, pressing into Harry like a brand. "You're not. There's no one else I know of who made that sacrifice for so many people."

Harry rested a hand on his chest. His heart hadn't stopped, but it felt like something else had.

An ache, perhaps. An old wound.


	7. Entangled

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Entangled_

His wrist-bell jolted Harry out of his sound sleep, so sound that he wondered if Malfoy had either cast another spell on him or slipped something into his food. He sat up, whipping sleep from his eyes with the back of one hand while he reached for his wand. "_Tempus_," he muttered, and grunted sourly when he realized it was nearly three in the morning. At least that meant a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Harry held his wrist-bell out and read the letters printing out on the silver scroll. _Another murder. Same method as the Madam Malkin's one. Corner of Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. Auror Potter to report._

Harry cursed softly under his breath and flung himself out of bed. He should have known, he thought, as he dressed in a new pair of trousers and a new set of Auror robes. A Cleaning Charm made his shirt ruffle around him, and then he was ready to go.

He had _hoped _that the Unspeakables could handle the case now that Harry and the other Aurors had confirmed a Dark artifact had destroyed the first victim, but of course not. They were better with things than people. They could research and sift and grind and come up with an answer in the end, but not fast enough to prevent the artifact from being used other times.

_Should I leave a note for Malfoy? _Harry nearly did, but the bell on his wrist jangled, hard, and reminded him that he was the only Auror summoned, probably because his superiors wanted to avoid alerting a lot of people. This murder was much more public than the last. They would want someone to clean it up as soon as possible.

And Malfoy would realize where Harry had gone if he vanished from his bed in the middle of the night. There was really only one good reason.

Harry bounded out of his bedroom and towards the Floo. He was already running through the shops in his head that would still be open this late and let him use their Floo. He could Apparate in, sure, but the Ministry probably didn't want this to be dramatic, or they would have called more Aurors—

"Where are you going?"

Harry started. He thought he hadn't been that loud, but he had forgotten that he had to pass right by the door of Malfoy's new bedroom to get to the drawing room. He waved a hand at him. "Sorry. Late night call. Sorry to wake you up." That was incoherent, but Malfoy had never expected him to be anything else.

"Who with?" Malfoy turned and walked back into his bedroom, but left his door open. Harry didn't know why he cared.

He answered, though, in the interests of keeping peace. "No one else. Just me."

A pause. Then Malfoy stepped up to the door and watched him with a cool mask on his face. "When you were up all last night? What are they thinking?"

"That I had all day to sleep?" Harry rolled his eyes. "And thanks to you, I did sleep most of the day, so I'm fine. And I'm wasting time." The bell on his wrist hurt this time, as hard as it rang. He turned to Apparate after all. He thought he could come out in an alley beyond Diagon's main entrance and not alert anyone that way.

Something was slightly wrong with the Apparition, but he didn't know what, until he came out of it and checked to make sure he had all his limbs. Then he realized he had one extra. No, a whole _body _extra. He'd accidentally Side-Alonged Malfoy, who had grabbed hold of Harry's arm.

"You idiot!" Harry hissed at him, shaking his arm free and patting Malfoy down roughly about the head and shoulders. No, he wasn't missing an ear, or his hair, or the whole back of his _spine, _the way Harry had seen once when the criminal he'd been chasing had Splinched himself horribly. Harry stood back and glared at him. "I didn't know you were _there!_ I didn't make the right adjustments for bringing someone with me! I could have _hurt you!_"

Malfoy was still and silent. He frowned a few seconds later, as though some of Harry's statements had finally caught up with his ears. "You didn't know I was there?"

Harry shook his head impatiently. "Of course not! You must have grabbed me just as I vanished. You were lucky you're only minus your common sense." He turned away from Malfoy and found that at least they were in the little alley he'd been aiming for. "Good. Stay here," he added over his shoulder, as he began to walk fast towards the murder scene.

Of course, footsteps followed him. Harry whirled around. "There's no reason for you to come with me," he said, as slowly and clearly as he could. "You don't have to protect me. There's no one there for you to watch me interact with. And I'm already here, so you can't put me back to sleep."

"If you die in the middle of a murder investigation, Scorpius's debt is never fulfilled." Malfoy's eyes burned. "And if I can save your life, then the debt is fulfilled the old-fashioned way, and I can leave."

Harry hesitated, wondering if he wanted that. Malfoy had been right about several things so far, including the fact that Harry volunteered for more shifts than he had to and he functioned better with food in him.

And in the end, he didn't own Malfoy. He wasn't his parent. He wasn't his husband, even, and couldn't ask him to stay safe for the sake of their marriage, the way he had with Ginny when she wanted to fly with a broken leg. He nodded. "All right. Come on."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes, as though he wanted to know why Harry had given in so easily, but Harry didn't have time for his little crises. He herded Malfoy across the road and up to the murder scene.

The body looked the same as it had in Madam Malkin's, although of course this one was a different body: torn to pieces of cloth and splatters of blood, beyond recognition. Harry grimaced and crouched down. Yes, there were the little arrow-shaped notches in the stone of the road, each surrounded with a scattering of black flakes.

"Don't touch those," he added, seeing Malfoy staring into one of the notches. "They're the remains of a Dark artifact that even the Unspeakables don't understand. We think the murder weapon left them."

Malfoy rolled his eyes and stood up. "You must truly think I'm stupid, to warn me so consistently," he muttered, and moved back to lean against the wall that led into Knockturn Alley.

"I didn't know if you knew," Harry muttered back. He returned to circling around the body on his heels, not touching anything except with the shimmer of a Protecto-Preservation Charm around his hand, to shield his skin and preserve the things he picked up.

No telling who it had been. The clothes were _exploded, _the blood scattered everywhere. Harry grimaced and shook his head. Without an identity, they would have a much harder time learning if this was a series of random murders, the way that Dark wizards gone insane enough often engaged in, or if the people involved knew each other and the murderer. Perhaps the artifact had even been invented by several people and now one inventor was eliminating the rest.

"Who reported this?"

Harry looked up. "Hmm? What?" It took him a moment to realize it was Malfoy who had asked the question; his mind was far away. "Oh. Someone who owns a shop along the street. Probably in Knockturn Alley. They stay open a lot later than Diagon Alley." He put his head down and worked in another circle, trying to make out footprints—mostly useless on cobblestones, but you never knew.

"How do you know that? Did your bell say that?"

_Don't you have another Auror you could ask? _But Harry answered in as measured a voice as he could. "No. I'm guessing. Sometimes Aurors do that, you know," he added, and went back to trying to estimate where the murderer would have stood to throw the weapon. Then he sighed. Kind of useless, without knowing how far the weapon went or what it looked like before it exploded the body.

But he had seen in Madam Malkin's that a grain of it could zip straight at someone and hurt them. What if it wasn't the solid artifact that Harry had envisioned and the Unspeakables were working to find? What if it _was _just a powder? Then he would know what it looked like and approximately how far the specks could fly, based on his experience with the one flying at him in Madam Malkin's. And he also knew, based on that, that the speck was unlikely to change directions in mid-flight.

He raised his wand, intending to create a circle all around the body from the distance he remembered and work his way in from there, but Malfoy interrupted again. "Then how do you know who reported it at all? How do you know this isn't a trap?"

"Because," Harry said, and bit back the spell he wanted to cast because it would probably come out as a curse on Malfoy at this point, "there's the small matter of there being a body here."

Malfoy's silence pressed on his back like a hand. Harry hissed over his shoulder, "Are you _done_? I have a theory about the weapon that killed them. I want to get on with creating a circle."

"That isn't a body," Malfoy said.

"I'm sure that your friends probably enjoy you being so relentlessly literal," Harry said. "_I don't. _Yes, there isn't technically a body, just rags and blood, but—"

"Rags and blood, but no flesh," Malfoy said, stepping up beside him. "Did you notice that? It would be ridiculously easy to create the appearance of a murder here with the excuse that the weapon destroyed the entire body."

Harry paused. He had worked with Aurors he despised before, either because of their politics or because they were prone to hero-worshipping him. He'd learned to listen to good suggestions, no matter where they came from.

"Maybe the flesh is buried under the blood," he said, even though he knew Malfoy was right and he should have seen something more than this. Even if the powder had pulverized all the corpse's bones to dust, where was that dust? And the bits of torn flesh he had seen on the murder scene at Madam Malkin's?

Instinct made the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle and sharpened his hearing. Instinct made him twist his head and focus in the right direction, and then he knew what was coming as though someone had jabbed one of the missing bones into his throat. He _knew_.

He didn't bother wasting time with a warning. He just flung himself at Malfoy and bore him to the ground.

A cascade of the powder soared overhead, landing in a messy circle where Harry and Malfoy had been standing. He heard it hiss like boiling water, and then the ground exploded. Harry winced. He rolled on top of Malfoy, shielding him from the flying dirt and stone that sprang into the air.

"Let me up." Malfoy was fighting beneath him. Harry knew why. He hated the idea of owing Harry _another _life-debt. He wanted to be up and protecting Harry so that he could discharge Scorpius's in the simplest way possible.

"_Down_," Harry said, and he might have said it in Parseltongue, he wasn't really sure. The point was that Malfoy stopped acting stupid and froze.

Harry couldn't raise a shield against the powder, not without knowing what it did. A simple spell to detect whether it was Dark had made it explode last time. No, he needed to take down the person throwing it, and as soon as possible. And he knew one way to do that, one that was a little reckless but not as much as it would have been if they hadn't already thrown the powder. Darkness or no darkness, that indicated their enemy knew where they were.

Harry thrust his wand up and thought, rather than said, _Conflagro._

The jet of light that flew up from his wand would have made a dozen _Lumos _Charms look small, and that was the point. It leafed out in the shape of a burning tree above Harry, his wand the trunk, the spreading radiance the many, eight-pointed branches. Harry laughed as he felt Malfoy flinch. He wasn't afraid of exploding powder or mysterious weapons, but being exposed made him want to scuttle and find a rock.

Harry whipped his head around. He'd prepared for the intense light, and hadn't lost his vision. The people standing in the direction of the newest apothecary on Knockturn Alley, though, had their hands over their eyes and their heads bowed in a useless attempt at protection. They wore white robes, with an edging of blue around the hoods and the hems. Harry narrowed his eyes, absorbing as many details as he could. He had never seen that particular metallic shade of blue before, and thought it must be hard to weave, dye, or conjure.

And each of them wore a symbol above their heart. The symbol had a writhing mass of eight legs. _Spider._

Harry lunged at them, only raising a Shield Charm around Malfoy when he was sure that he wouldn't have any more of the black powder flying their way any second. The people on the ends of their little line turned and ran.

The one in the middle, who Harry thought was a man, met Harry's eyes coolly and held up another hand.

_Stupefy, _Harry thought, and the red light left his wand and flew at the man just as he tossed the black powder.

At the same moment, Harry heard footsteps coming up behind him.

He had only seconds to decide what to do, and defensive instincts won out over offensive ones, the way they always did for Harry. He locked his legs and flipped backwards with an ease that he heard Malfoy damn him for, because the next instant he had crashed into Malfoy and borne him to earth. Because of course Malfoy had got around the shield and come up behind him, in his obsession with not owing Harry anything.

"I forgive this life-debt before it gets started!" Harry snapped into Malfoy's ear, or what he hoped was the ear, and swung back around, to see if his Stunner had landed.

It hadn't. It had met the black powder in midair, from the fading sparkles of angry little red explosions left behind, and not touched the man in the white robe. The man drew something that looked like a filmy veil across the lower part of his face. Meanwhile, Harry, knowing he was going to get away, memorized his deep blue eyes and the small scar that he could see curving around the outside of his right eye socket.

Then the white-robed wizard whirled on the spot and Apparated.

Harry sighed and stood up, wincing when his muscles protested. Yes, he was really getting too old for the more flexible side of Auror work. Luckily, he didn't think gathering what he could of the black powder and any other evidence the white-robed wizards might have left behind would take much more bending.

"You prevented me from aiding you."

Harry looked up at the sky, from which the last traces of his Blaze Spell were fading, and shook his head. Did anyone else ever have to cope with a burden like Malfoy?

"This murder was probably fake, but I saw that weapon destroy someone so completely once before that we couldn't identify them," Harry said. "Of course I wasn't going to risk it touching you. And I didn't know where it would go when you came running up behind me, or that a spell touching it could neutralize it."

"I could have helped."

"You helped by being here and warning me it was a trap," Harry said, finally turning to face him. "I probably wouldn't have noticed in time. Thank you."

Malfoy was white and shaking. His wand gave little tremors now and then that made Harry suddenly realize he had probably never faced battle since the end of the war. It was such a commonplace occurrence to Harry that he had forgotten the threat of sudden violent death flying around unnerved normal people.

"Hey," he said, gently taking Malfoy's arm and patting it a little. "You okay?"

Malfoy drew away, closing himself down the way he did when Harry questioned his commitment to the life-debt. His eyes were wide and dark and horribly promising as he glared at Harry.

"You saved my life again," he said. "_Twice_. And you prevented me from helping you in all the ways that I should have, if my service to pay back Scorpius's life-debt is to help you get your life into order."

"I did," Harry said, and couldn't keep the hopeful note out of his voice. Malfoy had _already _helped him, but Harry wasn't looking forward to another three weeks of discussions like this. "Doesn't that mean I've refused the service, and I can't do that, and now you have to leave?"

Malfoy seized the front of his robes and jerked him close. Harry went with it only because he knew all the many, many ways that he could dig his wand into Malfoy's ribs from this angle.

"I would have saved your life and this could have been over." Malfoy's voice was low and shook with passion. "Or you could have trusted that I knew what I was doing and shielded yourself instead of me." He shook Harry a little. "Now, instead, we have a _tangle _to deal with. Do you know how many debts link us now, counting the earlier ones that we ignored?"

"I thought we weren't counting them," Harry pointed out. "That's what _ignored _means."

Malfoy closed his eyes. "More to the _point, _Potter," he said, speaking as if he were utterly exhausted, "you have to consider that whoever set up this trap informed you of it by your wrist-bell. That argues, at the _least, _that Auror instruments have been compromised, and you may not be able to trust any message sent that way in the near future."

Harry stood still for a second, then sighed. "You're right. Listen. Let me clean up some here and get what evidence I can, and then we'll go home and talk about it, okay?"

Malfoy waited for him in silence, not even tapping his foot or moving his wand around. Harry glanced at him now and then as he scraped dark powder up from the earth and put it in potions vials, mainly the powder that had met his Stunner. It seemed a lot more inert and less dangerous than the other stuff.

_I wonder if he knows how uptight he is, and that he might need help just as much as I do?_


	8. Thunder Far Away

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Thunder Far Away_

"And are you _sure _that someone interfered with the wrist-bell?"

Harry scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. Why did Robards insist on questioning him like this? Harry had given him all the details of the "crime" on the corner of Knockturn Alley and Diagon, had cleaned up the evidence so no one else would be alarmed by it, and then come straight to the Ministry and told them everything. It wasn't like he was known for lying. The only thing he had done that might come under the category was cover up for another Auror when he needed a holiday.

Malfoy stood in the corridor outside the office. He had fixed Harry with the same frozen stare before Robards shut his office door that he'd used ever since Harry told him that they needed to go to the Ministry first, instead of home for the conversation Harry had promised.

Harry was sorry about that, but when his wrist-bell had jerked and rung, telling him to come to the Ministry at once, he had thought it best to obey. If this was another trap, the Ministry at least had enough people around, even in the middle of the night, that Harry could easily find help.

Robards, the senior Auror who had called him, didn't seem inclined to trust him, though. He had made Harry repeat the wrist-bell part of the story again and again, and now he leaned back with his heavy hands on the desk in front of him, an even heavier frown on his face.

"I never _heard _of such a thing," he said. "The Unspeakables were the ones who designed the bells. The ones who promised us that they were impossible to interfere with."

"The Unspeakables were wrong," Harry said, and didn't feel inclined to temper his speech even when Robards glared at him. He didn't know what else Robards wanted from him. Harry had had the experience he'd had.

"You'll have to go and talk to them," Robards said, and opened his office door again, even as he prepared a memo that Harry knew would fly ahead of him to the Department of Mysteries. "You're bringing them quite the number of cases lately."

"I didn't know what the black powder was," Harry said. "The only thing I can say for certain after my encounter with the—the Spiders is that it _is _a powder, and it isn't a solid object."

"Unless it's something they made from grinding up a solid object."

Harry winced. Robards always made him feel stupid—not that Robards was a genius, but he saw around corners and could predict things in a way that Harry still couldn't do. Harry was better with what was in front of him.

"Right, sir," he said, and watched the memo wing away before he stepped out into the corridor.

Malfoy was waiting for him. Harry paused, one foot awkwardly in the air before he brought it down again. He was aware of Robards's curious gaze, too, though Robards only muttered something under his breath that sounded like, "Watch yourself," before he shut the office up.

"Well?" Malfoy said. He spoke as if his lips had turned to ice.

Harry sighed. "I have to go to the Department of Mysteries and talk to them about the wrist-bell and the ways that someone could possibly have interfered with it. You can go home, or you can come with me. I doubt they'll really care."

"I'm a witness," Malfoy said, and set out as though he knew the way to the Department of Mysteries better than Harry did. Maybe he did, Harry thought as he followed him. He knew that Malfoy had a lot of money, and he assumed that he'd inherited it, but maybe he leavened that with selling potions to Unspeakables or consulting with them about Dark artifacts or something.

Harry studied Malfoy's face sideways as he walked. Malfoy had ceased to look frozen and now merely looked lifeless. The Aurors passing, sometimes dragging a bound and Silenced criminal, didn't gain more from him than the flicker of an eyelash. When they had to wait for the lifts, he stood as silently and stolidly as though he did that every day of his life, too.

Harry cocked his head. He wondered if he had imagined the fear on Malfoy's face after the black powder exploded, the passion making his hand shake when he told Harry that he thought Harry had done enough because Harry had nearly sacrificed his life to save everyone. This man didn't look capable of that kind of emotion.

"Since you can't seem to stop staring at me," Malfoy said, "proving our connection, this seems to be the perfect place to have that talk about life-debts you promised me."

Harry started, and stepped into the lift when it arrived with a sense of impending doom. "We really should wait," he said. "There are lots of people who might overhear us here and use the information against you."

"Such concern," Malfoy said, turning to face him, and yes, the mask was gone and Harry realized it had been a mask. Malfoy's eyes were cold, his pulse beating in his throat as though it would like to leap out and box Harry's ears. "There's no one else in the lift with us, and we might have to wait a while when we get there. Do you have _any idea _of the problems you've caused?"

Harry wanted to apologize. It was the thing he would have done with most other people who were angry at him. It seemed—well, the best thing to do, really. Most of the time, he was in the wrong. He just didn't understand people that well, even the ones he was closest to, like Lily. And it saved time and effort and arguments in the future.

But if he apologized enough to Malfoy, Malfoy would walk all over him. And Harry was supposed to be learning how to say no. He tilted his head back and asked instead, "Would letting you die have been any more effective? And you might have saved my life, canceling a debt, and then I'd have saved yours the next time and started another one. And you said that the debts from years ago were included in it, too. So I don't see that it makes a difference, really."

Malfoy blinked rapidly, several times. Harry waited, but he hadn't come up with any more answer than that by the time the lift reached the Department of Mysteries. Harry stepped off, rolling his eyes. He thought it likely that Malfoy would want to go home now. He could have nothing else to say to Harry.

But he followed Harry all the way to the Department of Mysteries, and stayed on the bench outside the office of the Unspeakable Harry was directed to speak to, the one who had invented the wrist-bells. When Harry looked back once before _that _door shut behind him, he could see Malfoy's eyes.

_They're the most luminous things in here, _Harry thought irrelevantly, and then shut thought out altogether and concentrated on remembering details, the way the Unspeakables liked.

* * *

It was almost noon again by the time Harker, the Unspeakable Harry had been speaking to, was satisfied that he knew what had caused the problem with the wrist-bell and let Harry go. Harry shook his head as he stepped out. Harker, true to his kind, had made little noises of enlightenment, but hadn't told Harry how he suspected the Spiders were tampering with the thing.

And he hadn't told Harry whether he could even trust messages from the bell in the future. Harry sighed.

"It seems that your disregard for your well-being is a protective adaptation," Malfoy murmured, falling into step beside him. "Since no one else gives a shit, either."

Harry started and blinked at him. "Malfoy? Thought you'd gone home hours ago." He would have continued, but an embarrassingly noisy rumble started up from his stomach. He patted it and cleared his throat.

"Come," Malfoy said, and swept ahead of Harry. His frozen look had its uses, it seemed, in the way that he managed to send people scuttling out of their way. Harry stumbled a little in his wake, half-amused, half-curious. He had no idea what Malfoy thought he could accomplish by making people run away from him.

But where Malfoy led him wasn't a Floo or the Apparition point, as Harry had thought it would be, but to a tiny restaurant on the Ministry's eighth floor that Harry had never suspected was there. Malfoy stared at the witch running it, and she piled biscuits and scones and butter on a tray until it threatened to collapse. Then Malfoy floated it over to one of the seven desks crammed into the office, which must once have been separate cubicles, and dropped it in front of Harry with an expressive thump. Harry meekly broke a scone and put some butter on it.

"Let us discuss this," Malfoy said, sliding into the seat across from him, and waving his wand. A sophisticated and subtle Privacy Charm sprang up around them; Harry thought he was the only one in the vicinity who noticed it, and he might not have if he was chewing something crunchier. He nodded to Malfoy in appreciation, but he couldn't speak yet, and Malfoy swept ahead into the gap, leaning forwards and staring into Harry's eyes. "Perhaps you are right that the life-debts would entangle us whether or not you had let me save your life last night."

Harry nodded, encouragement to go on, and reached for a biscuit that looked as if it might fill one of the empty, gnawing corners in his stomach.

"But I am not one of those you must protect." Malfoy's voice had become glittering and diamond-edged as frost, and he closed his hands on the edge of the table. Harry sheltered the food with his arm. "I am not one of your helpless children. I am not your ex-wife, who was content to stay out of your life until she threw up her hands."

Harry tried to come to Ginny's defense, but his mouth was still full, and Malfoy rolled on. "I _will not _be treated like a child or a dependent."

Harry finally swallowed enough, although it left his throat sticky, to say something coherent in protest. "I wasn't treating you like a child. I was protecting you the way I would a partner."

Malfoy paused, and those cold eyes evaluated him until Harry almost squirmed in his chair. Then Malfoy shook his head. "No. You wanted me to stay behind in the alley. You would not have commanded a partner to stay so."

Harry finally opened a hand towards him, the way he had towards Ginny when their arguments over divorce or staying married had got to this point. "Fine, yes, I did. You don't have the training that an Auror would to survive a battle like that. And you seized my arm and Apparated along with me when I didn't know you were there! I could have hurt you without even realizing it! I had a low opinion of your common sense, okay? I wanted you to keep out of the way."

Malfoy went on staring, and then said, "You do not need to _worry about me_."

Harry leaned back and snorted. "Too late," he said. "I'm worried about someone who takes risks like that and waits up for me. If you wanted me not to worry, then you should have gone about helping me in the most hateful way possible."

"Then you would not have listened to me." Malfoy seemed to be considering flipping the table again, if the position of his hands was any indication.

"But then I wouldn't be worrying about you, either," Harry pointed out, and popped a biscuit into his mouth in triumph, while Malfoy still sought words and his eyes grew cold enough to freeze his skin.

"This is ridiculous," Malfoy said at last, his voice low and very precise. "I am meant to be helping _you_, not the other way around."

"I don't see why we can't help each other," Harry said. He was more pleased with the idea the more he thought about it. It would content Scorpius to know that his father wasn't just laboring to help Harry with no reward, and that would content Al. And maybe it would give Harry the courage to go through the inevitable confrontations with Lily and Ginny and Ron and Hermione when they found out Malfoy was living with him, if Harry could think of him as someone he was helping, too.

"Do you define yourself by service?"

Harry blinked at Malfoy and put the biscuit he'd been about to eat down. "What? I'm more than an Auror, if that's what you mean."

"But you define yourself by the service you can give to others." Malfoy's eyes had an almost hysterical glitter in them now that didn't go well with their general coldness. "How you can help them. You think of yourself as someone who owes me help, not someone who's owed."

Harry rolled his eyes. "That would be sort of hard with you complaining about the life-debt every time I turn around, wouldn't it? And I don't see why it's a bad thing. If I can do something, I should. If I see a problem and I don't solve it, who's going to?"

Malfoy's face had a very strange expression on it. Harry didn't understand it until he massaged his throat as if something was going to crawl up the inside of it, cleared it, and said, "I am not a _problem, _Potter."

Harry shrugged at him and took another scone. "Sorry," he said, through the food, partially because he thought it should be said and partially to see Malfoy scowl about his lack of manners. "Didn't mean to imply that you were. I just meant that you were terrified after the battle, and you took a risk by Apparating along with me without telling me that you were going to be doing it, and the notion of entangled life-debts upsets you. If I can ease one of those things, make you more comfortable, then I should."

"Why?" Malfoy now looked as if he would push himself up from the table and walk away, life-debt or no.

Harry blinked. He hadn't thought Malfoy, of all people, would need an explanation for something Harry wanted to do for him personally. He hadn't needed an explanation of why Harry had wanted to save Scorpius, had he? The fact that it was his son seemed like it was enough.

"Because it's the right thing to do," Harry said finally. He didn't have any other answer. He never would, no matter how long Malfoy stared at him.

Malfoy bowed his head and put his hand on his forehead. Harry watched him, still eating scones. He was sorry he was so exasperating to deal with, but maybe Malfoy's advice about learning to say no had done him some good already, because he didn't feel the need to apologize for it.

"Auror Potter!"

Harry turned around. One of the Unspeakables he recognized from a few meetings, although he hadn't been in the office speaking to him this time, was bustling up to his table, frowning and tapping the bell that hung from his own wrist.

"You need to come back in and let us look at your bell again, Auror Potter," the Unspeakable said, his beard swinging as he shook his head. "We thought of something that could have caused the problem, a few tests we didn't perform. It should take no more than four or five hours."

Harry opened his mouth, and then caught Malfoy's eye across the table. He had dropped his hands from his face and gone frosty again, as if the outcome of the situation interested him, but had nothing to do with him.

Harry reached up and unhooked the leather band that attached his own bell to his wrist, and dropped it into the Unspeakable's reaching hand.

"There you are," he said, smiling up at him. "You have my bell, and you can perform any tests you want on it. I'm going home."

The Unspeakable stared at him, then shook his head a little. "Auror Robards assured us that you would cooperate," he said.

"What makes you think I'm not?"

The Unspeakable frowned again, and then obviously rewrote recent history in his head to suit himself. As Harry had always known, they were more interested in objects than people, and they had the object. The chances that the problem lay with Harry himself were small, and they wanted to perform their tests on something that wouldn't talk back. "Right," the Unspeakable said, and bustled off again.

Harry turned back to Malfoy. "Can we take these scones and biscuits with us?"

Malfoy nodded and rose slowly to his feet, never taking his gaze off Harry. Harry raised his eyebrows. "What? Wasn't that a good enough example of saying no?"

"It was a wonderful one," Malfoy said, and dipped his head a little. "Yes, we can take them with us."

He turned to make arrangements for another tray, and so he didn't see the way Harry closed his eyes and took in a long breath. Good. Harry had the feeling that he would have said something cutting about it, namely that Harry shouldn't let a stray bit of approval affect him like that.

But Harry felt…

He could feel appreciation sliding through him like marmalade.

_Wonderful, _Malfoy had said. And even though the tone of his voice hadn't altered much, it was all too clear that he had spoken with unqualified approval.

_If I can help you, it doesn't matter much, because you're helping me more, _Harry thought, and was ready by the time Malfoy turned around again with the food. The least he could do was show his appreciation when Malfoy did.


	9. Unsettled

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—Unsettled_

"Go straight to bed."

Harry rolled his eyes when Malfoy said that, but it had been an unsettling day, for him as well as Malfoy, and even if he'd slept most of the day yesterday, he hadn't had a chance to rest after the confrontation with the Spiders.

"Yeah," he said. "See you later, Malfoy."

Malfoy came to a dead stop behind him and stared at his back, or at least that was what Harry saw when he turned around to see why Malfoy's footsteps had stopped. Harry rolled his eyes again. He doubted he would ever understand the sum total of Malfoy's issues, and if Malfoy wanted him to understand something, he seemed not to have much trouble explaining it to Harry.

Going into his bedroom and collapsing without the fear that the wrist-bell would wake him in a few hours was heavenly.

* * *

Getting woken up a few hours later, anyway, by shrieks from the drawing room was _not_. Harry made sure that he had his trousers on before he grabbed his wand and bolted out the door, though. Some of the shrieks were feminine, and anyone female except Hermione who came over to his house right now was someone he'd prefer not to appear half-naked in front of.

Sure enough, the shrieks turned into recognizable words by the time that Harry rounded the corner and came through the open door of the drawing room.

"—_you_ doing here, you don't have any reason to be here, I don't care _what _Dad did—"

And sure enough, it was Lily, yelling at Malfoy, who stood with his arms folded in front of the couch and regarded her as if she was a shrilling insect. Lily turned as Harry entered the room and flung out a hand.

"Why did you invite him over, Dad?" she demanded. "You know that I looked forward to having time alone with you. It was supposed to be just you and me." She shut her eyes and turned away, walking to the Floo as if she would walk back through it.

Malfoy shut his eyes, too, and shook his head. Harry stabbed him with a single glance that made his mouth fall open, then turned to Lily.

"Sorry, Lils," he said quietly. "I didn't invite him over. He kind of insisted on it, to pay the life-debt. But what are you doing here? I thought you weren't supposed to come over until the weekend." Then Lily turned and looked at him with wide, betrayed eyes, and Harry winced. He'd been stupid again, hadn't he?

"I mean, you're welcome at any time—I just thought you preferred to be with your mum right now," he added hastily.

Lily pivoted to face him, so slowly that Harry knew he wasn't forgiven yet. Well, he shouldn't be. He wanted this house to be a home to his daughter, not some place that was just a retreat for him. He never wanted to be cut off from his family.

Malfoy cleared his throat. Harry didn't turn, though. This was between him and Lily.

Lily looked straight at him. "I wanted to go away because you weren't listening to me," she said. "But now I want to come back, because Mum's not listening." She locked her hands in front of her, saw they were trembling, and locked them behind her back. "I just want one of you to _listen _to me!"

Harry crouched down in front of her. Lily was the shortest of his children, something she was sensitive about, and it didn't have much to do with age. Ginny was short, too. "Please tell me," Harry whispered. "How can I be better? How can I listen?"

Lily opened her mouth, closed it. Harry saw the moment when she gave up, because she was _ten, _and he was an adult asking a ten-year-old for advice. "I don't _know_!" she said, and ran out of the room, heading directly for hers. Harry heard the door open and slam, and sighed. At least he hadn't made the mistake of giving Malfoy her room.

He stood up and turned around, still rubbing his face, and started when he saw Malfoy looking hard at him. "What?" he snapped. "Look, you're not going to make me love my daughter any less by staring at me like that. I know that I've done a lot of things wrong by her, and I have to find a way to start making it right."

"That's one of the things I came to help you with," Malfoy said, nodding. "And I think the best thing you could do right now is firecall your ex-wife."

Harry gaped at him. "Why?" he asked, when he could close his mouth enough to speak. From the way Malfoy's fingers rapped against his hip, he thought Harry should have been able to speak a lot earlier.

"Because I think your daughter came here without permission," Malfoy said evenly. "Maybe ran away. Admittedly, she's not in Hogwarts, but it's five in the afternoon now, not a time when most parents would give permission for a ten-year-old child to go to a different house. Does Weasley even _know_? Maybe not. It would avoid a scene if you firecalled her, told her that your daughter's here, and asked how she wants to handle it."

"Ginny took the name Potter when she married, you know," Harry said evenly, even as he turned towards the fireplace and picked up a handful of Floo powder from the dish. "And you're sure that she came without permission? It's not as though I got to see her actually arrive, you know."

"Not sure," Malfoy said. "But she didn't mention a thing about her mother when she was shrieking at me, except to say that her mother didn't listen to her, either, and was presumably part of the 'they' who never listen."

"Don't say my daughter shrieks," Harry snapped at him.

Malfoy waved him off with one hand. "It's the word you were using in your head."

Harry wouldn't try to argue against that, because he was a terrible liar, and Malfoy would figure it out. He just sniffed at him and turned away, throwing the Floo powder into the fire. He motioned to Malfoy to move out of the way as he knelt. He knew that people he firecalled couldn't usually look through the flames and see who was with him—although Hermione was uncannily good at guessing—but he didn't want to chance it.

Malfoy took a precise step to the side. Out of the way of the fireplace, but he could see everything that was happening on both Harry's and Ginny's ends. Harry exhaled slow and hard and faced the fire again.

Ginny came into view, her face twisted into a scowl. The splash of ink on her chin said clearly that she was racing to make a deadline, and her ruffled skirt and hair said she'd just come back from an interview.

Harry felt his heart twist to match her face as he looked at her. He knew that at some point he had fallen out of love with her, and that it had even been long before the divorce, probably, but looking at her like this, he couldn't remember _why _he'd fallen out of love.

"Who is—_Harry_? Great. Just what this day needed to make it complete." Ginny raked a hand through her hair and only made it all the more messy and ruffled. "If you tell me that you can't take Lily this weekend, I'm going to scream, I really am. You _know _what we agreed on."

"I know," Harry said. "But I seem to have Lily right now. She Flooed over. I didn't know if she had your permission or not."

Ginny closed her eyes for a second and stood there. Then she opened them and said, "I would have come after her right away if she didn't."

Her tone cut into Harry, cut all the more because Harry had faced that accusation from the other end, that he was neglectful of his children because of his job, so he knew exactly what Ginny was feeling right now. He winced a second time, and said, "All right. But did you want me to take her for the rest of this week, or what?"

Ginny stared at him, then thrust one hand at him and turned aside. "Just keep her for the rest of the afternoon, that's all I ask," she said, voice muffled as she bent down to look at a stack of parchments on a desk. "She's being absolutely impossible. She wanted to go flying, and when I said that I had to go to an interview but she could fly if she went over to the Burrow, she said she didn't want to go there because she'd just been there for her birthday party. She _knows _I have to work, but she wanted me to skip the interview and go flying with her. Or maybe she just wanted to do it by herself. I don't know, she was shrieking about both of those things by the time she was done."

Even without turning around, Harry could feel Malfoy's silent triumph that Ginny had used the word he had to describe Lily.

Harry gritted his teeth, told himself that was for Malfoy and not Ginny, and said, "All right. I'll ask her if she wants to stay for the afternoon and wants to fly with me."

Ginny nodded at him, said, "Thanks," and shut down the Floo. Harry sighed and sat back, and tried to remember again when he had decided that Ginny was not someone he wanted to love as a wife.

"You didn't tell her about me."

Harry started and turned around. Malfoy stood behind him, arms not folded now, eyes so direct that Harry wanted to flinch again. But he thought he had done enough of that for one day, and he didn't want Malfoy to mock him, so he stood up and said, "Not because I'm ashamed of you, or something."

Malfoy gave him a strange look, and then said, "You always jump straight to shame, as if that's a well-learned response."

"Maybe it is," Harry said. "And maybe I've done some things that I should be ashamed of. Anyway. Lily can tell her about you when she goes back to Ginny's house. That's one argument I don't want to have right now."

"Do you and your—Mrs. Potter always argue?" Malfoy looked around as though he missed the numbered list he'd been making yesterday.

"About a lot of things in the last year, yeah," Harry said, shaking his head. "Mostly about me spending so much time at my job that I never saw her or the kids. And I should go spend time with Lily, instead of standing here and analyzing what went wrong." He walked down the corridor and knocked on Lily's door.

"Lils?" he called. He glanced over his shoulder, but Malfoy had made himself scarce. Probably going back to his list in the kitchen, Harry thought.

"What?" Lily was leaning on the door from the other side, by the scrapes that Harry heard.

"Do you want to go flying with me?"

Lily opened the door and stared at him. Then her face fell and she said, "You talked to Mum."

Harry nodded. "I know you were disappointed you couldn't go flying, so I thought I'd offer to take you."

"You didn't know I wanted to fly until you talked to her," Lily whispered, and traced her foot back and forth over the floor.

Once again, Harry felt he was hopeless, just standing there not knowing what to say. Did Lily want him to know her so well that he didn't need to talk to Ginny about her, he would just _know _that she wanted to fly? But Harry had always been terrible about that, and the times he had thought he knew what would please Lily without asking, he had always been wrong. It was safer just to ask.

"No, I didn't," Harry said, and tried to make his voice as gentle as he could. "But I'm here now."

"Late," Lily muttered, but she seemed to be thawing, if the way she leaned back and studied him was any indication.

Harry smiled at her. Lily didn't smile back, but she said in a quieter voice, "What is Malfoy doing here?"

"_Mr. _Malfoy," Harry corrected her. "Just what he told you. I saved his son's life—you know, Scorpius, Al's friend—and now he needs to pay me back."

"Let Scorpius do it."

"Scorpius is twelve, and still has to attend Hogwarts," Harry reminded her. "Plus, it's important that this get cleared up before his thirteenth birthday at the end of the month. It's a kind of Malfoy tradition. Malfoy decided that he needed to take on the debt and pay me back himself."

"If _you_ call him Malfoy, why can't I?"

_Good question. _Great, now he would have to be sure that he called him _Mr. _Malfoy in front of his daughter for the next three weeks. Harry hid a sigh and nodded to her. "That was a slip of the tongue. I should call him Mr. Malfoy. Thank you for reminding me."

Lily eyed him sideways. "But why does he have to stay here? He could pay you back and just visit sometimes."

_Here it comes. _"Because he decided that he needed to be right with me and watch me all the time to know the best way to pay me back."

Lily stood there for a second. Harry recognized when she was in one of her internal debates, and winced. Usually the debates turned out badly for him.

At last, Lily looked up, and her eyes were luminous. "Ask him to leave," she whispered. "I want some time alone with you."

Harry swallowed. _Shit._ He should have known this would happen. Not with Al or Jamie, since they were in Hogwarts now, and not with Ginny, since spending time alone with each other was so uncomfortable for both of them now. But Lily was the one who needed him most and who he'd neglected the most, and this was a clear, simple thing she was asking for, one that he couldn't get wrong.

"All right," Harry said, voice as low as he knew how to make it. "And then we'll go flying, right?"

Lily smiled at him, and it really was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. "Then we'll go flying."

She shut her door, but she didn't slam it, and Harry stood there sighing for a second. Then he turned around, wondering how to talk to Malfoy about leaving.

He nearly leaped out of his skin when he realized Malfoy stood there with his arms folded, leaning casually against the wall.

"So, um." Harry rubbed the back of his neck. It seemed just as hard facing Malfoy now as it had been facing Lily a minute ago.

And that meant something was _wrong. _He should care more about his daughter than a random acquaintance who had inserted himself into Harry's life.

Harry straightened his spine. "You need to leave," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, but I can't do this."

Malfoy didn't respond to him. His eyes were fixed on Lily's closed door, and there was a slight, peculiar smile on his lips that made Harry wonder if he needed to draw his wand to protect his daughter.

Then Malfoy looked at him and said, "When she reaches Hogwarts, she's going straight to Slytherin."

Harry stared at him, without words. What did that have to do with anything? And why did Malfoy think he could anger Harry by saying that? Al was in Slytherin. It wasn't like Harry would hate Lily for being in that House.

Malfoy shook his head. "She knew I was here the whole time. She looked straight at me and even mouthed a few things at me. You _are _unobservant, not to see it, Potter." He stood up and nodded. "I think I should leave you alone for a few days, after all. I'll come back on Friday."

"You can't," Harry said sharply. "This is my weekend to have Lily, and she'll probably be here on Friday afternoon."

Malfoy lazily regarded him out of eyes that were less cold than before. Harry didn't know what he had done to make them that way, though.

Or maybe it was Lily who had made them that way. Maybe Malfoy felt more relaxed around a fellow Slytherin. Harry relaxed a little himself. That meant Malfoy didn't hate his daughter.

Which shouldn't have been important, but was.

"Then I'll come back on Monday," Malfoy said, quietly. "In the meantime, we'll communicate by owl. I expect you to remember what I said about learning to say no, Potter. You haven't practiced it much so far with anyone except the Unspeakables." He leaned forwards. "And keep in mind…if you _don't _practice, I'll be back next week with only a fortnight left to change things. That means my methods will have to be more intense. You won't like that."

Harry frowned at him. "How do you know?"

That caused Malfoy to smile. Harry blinked again. He was really oddly affected by the man, if smiles and compliments from him made him feel this way.

"I do," Malfoy said, and swept out of the room. Harry heard him rustling around in the bedroom he'd created for himself, and he came out with a few trunks he was shrinking and tucking into his pocket.

He did stick his head around the corner, once, to say, "I left some meals made by my house-elves under the enchantment at the back of the cupboard. Don't let your greedy visitors eat it all."

He strode briskly away, and a few seconds later, Harry heard the roar of the Floo.

Harry went back to blinking. Everything had resolved itself more easily than he'd thought it would, and he didn't have to have as many arguments that would hurt people.

Then he smiled. And right now, he had a standing invitation to go flying with his daughter. He went to find his broom, whistling a little.

The thought occurred to him as he reached for it.

_Maybe…_

_Maybe Malfoy was happy because I stood up to _him, _too._

Which just proved how strange Malfoy really was.


	10. Father and Daughter

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—Father and Daughter_

"Here we are." Harry turned around and smiled at his daughter. "What do you want to begin with? Quidditch? Or just flying?"

Lily's back stiffened, although she was still looking around the pitch Harry had put behind the house—really just a rough little meadow whose boundaries were the wards, and there was a place vaguely marked on the ground where he might put a Keeper's hoop eventually—and Harry wondered what he'd done wrong. Then Lily turned to face him, pushing her hair out of her face. "I don't really like Quidditch."

"That's all right," Harry said, relief bubbling over like champagne. "We don't have to play it. We can just fly. Do you want to race?" He swung his leg over his broom, a Firebolt, and looked at Lily's broom. It wasn't the one he'd bought her. He didn't recognize the model, in fact.

Lily caught him looking and waved her hand. "This is a Starflare," she said, and hopped onto her broom. "And yes, I want to race." She took off as she spoke, and was already halfway across the pitch by the time Harry could blink.

"Cheater!" Harry yelled, so happy to have something _normal _to talk about with his daughter that that almost lifted him off the earth all by himself. He zoomed after Lily, but his broom couldn't catch hers. She looped in front of him, then hopped up and down on her broom, laughing. The wind whipped her hair around her face.

The image brought up memories of Ginny, playing Seeker for Gryffindor, but they didn't hurt as much as Harry would have expected. He found he could smile, even. He wondered if Malfoy would say better things about Lily if he saw her this way. She looked wild and happy and free. Nothing like the shrieking brat Malfoy thought she was.

"_Dad!_"

She could be _loud, _sometimes, but that was a different thing, Harry thought, and kicked higher so that he was hovering right behind her. "What is it, Lils?" he called.

"You're just sitting there staring at me, not trying to fly." Lily turned and looked at him. Her face was strange, Harry thought. He half-thought it was trying to twist itself into a sneer because that was the expression she wore most of the time she was with him, but she was too happy to do it. "I know that you used to be a fabulous flyer. Mum _said _you were. Show me some of the things that you did."

Harry blinked. Then he said, "Well, I was a Seeker. So we need a Snitch." He drew his wand and tapped one of the buttons on his robes. It flew up in front of him and hovered there, and Harry smiled, thought, and added blurring wings to it with one more flick of his wand.

He looked up, and Lily had an even stranger expression on her face now. "What?" he added. "You don't have to chase the Snitch. I just need something to focus on to remember some of the tricks."

Lily nodded, repeated, "I don't like Quidditch," to herself, as if it was a reminder, and then drew her broom out of the way.

Harry cast a Random Flight Charm on the makeshift Snitch, a spell usually used for pranks in George's shop. There was a buzzing noise, and the button zipped up and vanished. Harry set his broom to circling, keeping one eye out for it.

God, he'd missed this, even if he was older now and had even more trouble focusing his eyes. And even if he was being watched by the one of his children he wanted most desperately to impress.

Maybe he could do this, sometimes. Just have private Quidditch matches against himself. As Malfoy would probably say, who would it hurt?

There was a gleam of brass from the right. Harry flung himself after it, finding that the broom responded just as well as it used to. He was used to riding slower brooms than the Firebolt now, and he knew how to compensate, how to loop and dart and lift and fly backwards when necessary. Around in circles, up around corners—the Snitch was trying to escape by flying in a spiral—and then down towards the ground.

The grass was rising to meet him. Harry rolled over, reached out his left hand, nearly cornered the Snitch, and ended up frightening it into a dash from his left hand into his right. He sat back up, laughing.

The thrill that ran through him felt like wind, and sunlight, and strength. Harry wondered why he'd stopped flying. He could manage a little bit here and there, couldn't he? It wasn't like it was such a horrible thing to give up a few minutes of sleep or leave work early, sometimes. And Malfoy would probably even approve, since it was something he was doing for himself.

Then he turned around and saw the strange expression Lily was staring at him with.

This wasn't like the others. It didn't seem to be a mixture of emotions. And then Lily turned her head around and started flying away, and Harry knew he had seen tears in her eyes.

"Lily! Wait!" Harry let the Snitch go and flew after her. She was going pretty fast, and her broom was good, but she could only go as far as the edge of the wards. She didn't try to fly away after that, either. She waited with her head bent down and her hair in front of her face, as if she could hide behind it. Harry brushed it gently out of her face.

"You just looked so _happy_," Lily whispered. "And I knew that you weren't happy because you were out here with me. You weren't even _thinking _about me. You were thinking about Quidditch and catching the Snitch. I just—you don't need me here to be happy, do you? You would be happier if I was gone." She sniffled, but didn't wipe at her nose. Harry took out a handkerchief and gave it to her.

"That isn't true, Lily, no," Harry whispered to her. He knew he had to handle this carefully, but once again he was bewildered. It was like setting out to fly a broom and then having what you were flying on and the landscape all change around you. "I wanted to show you something, but I was also enjoying flying. I like it. I just haven't done a lot of it lately."

"You didn't think about me," Lily repeated dully.

"I wouldn't have done it at all if you hadn't asked me to fly with you," Harry said firmly. "It's been a long time since I even _flew, _let alone played Quidditch. So thanks for asking me to do that."

Lily was silent for a long time. Harry gently touched her cheek, and then hugged her when she didn't push him away.

"Is something else bothering you?" he whispered. "Can you tell me? Is it hard to say?"

Lily sniffled again, and then used the handkerchief hard enough to make her nose honk. "It's hard to say, yeah," she whispered. "Can we go down and go inside and have hot chocolate?"

"Of _course_," Harry said, his heart soaring almost as much as it had when he caught the Snitch. His daughter was talking to him and asking him to make something that wasn't impossible for him to make properly; even Ginny had said that his hot chocolate was always good. "Here, let's just bring the brooms down."

"I can do it myself," Lily whispered, but she smiled at him, and the next second, she was diving at the ground.

Harry followed, wondering if Malfoy would also tell him that he needed to stop being so sensitive. He would have winced at Lily's comment ordinarily, and thought of it as another failure, because he hadn't anticipated sounding like he was trying to fly her broom for her. Now, he just thought of it as something that of course she would say, a statement of fact.

_Maybe I should try being less sensitive around other people, too._

* * *

"It's like this, Dad."

Harry nodded to show he was listening. They were both sitting at his kitchen table with hot chocolate, with bits of marshmallow floating in it. That seemed to be a very Muggle way to make it, at least according to the people Harry had talked to, but Dudley had never demanded anything less, and Harry preferred it that way.

And Lily had drunk over half of it and not said anything, so Harry was prepared to consider it a success.

"You and Mum just got divorced, and you never asked me what _I _wanted." Lily stared at him from under her fringe for a second, then looked away. "You never asked me if I'd prefer you to stay together."

Harry shook his head. It was true, but it was also something that had never occurred to him, just like so many of the things Lily said. "You would have preferred that we stay in that horrible relationship? Arguing all the time?"

"You didn't fight that much," Lily said, tracing a finger over the tabletop. "You really didn't," she added, probably because she could feel the way Harry's mouth was falling open even if she wasn't looking up to see it. "You would just walk out of the room and go to work, and that was the end of it."

Harry sat there and thought about it, and in the end decided that, if he was old enough to admit he was confused about some of the things Lily was saying, he was old enough to admit that confusion.

"I don't understand, Lils," he said quietly. "We fought a lot at first, and then we didn't, it's true. But by that time, we'd already decided that we were getting a divorce."

"I want you _back_," Lily said. "And it's not the same to have another house to go to. You listened to me, when you were there. Mum wasn't so strict. We talked about having holidays together, not at the Burrow. I saw Al and Jamie when they came home, and now I'll only see them _some _of the time. We all talked, and you listened to me." She was on the verge of crying again, but she mopped angrily at her eyes, and the tears went away. "It wasn't perfect, but it was a lot better than you remember!"

Harry bit his lip. He didn't know how to suggest that it wasn't _his _memory that was at fault. Lily had come up with a pretty picture that had never happened. Sure, they had holidays together and talked sometimes, but Harry was gone most of the time, and he didn't listen enough to Lily even when he was there, and Ginny had always been the disciplinarian, and they celebrated plenty of holidays at the Burrow.

But arguing about the past wasn't what he wanted to do with the daughter he was just learning to respect and understand. So he said, as gently and clearly as he could, "Lils, both your mum and I are happier this way."

"But _I'm _not!" Lily flung the handkerchief on the table and looked as if she would push her chair back and storm off. "And you keep saying that I'm important to you like I'm supposed to believe it!" She planted her hands on the edge of the table and stood up, staring at Harry. "You need to get back together with Mum."

Harry hadn't thought this would happen, never anticipated it. He never did with Lily, though. At least they were arguing about it instead of sitting there in silence, he thought, or storming out of the room. That was the only good thing about it.

"I wish we hadn't had to get divorced," he admitted. "But your mum doesn't want to get back together with me, and I don't want to be with her."

That last part came out easily. Harry would have gone to the mirror and squinted suspiciously at his own mouth if he was alone, wondering if Malfoy had put a truth-telling enchantment on him. He'd never said it before, and not really even _thought _it.

Lily, unable to see that this was a moment of revelation for him, flung herself back from the table. "I don't understand," she whispered. "You wanted to ask me about what I wanted. That's it. That's all I want."

"I know, sweetie." Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. He was getting a headache, he thought, or he would have one soon. That was what usually happened when he discussed Ginny and the divorce. "It's not fair to you. I'll try to go flying with you more often, if you'd like that, and listen to you when you ask for certain birthday presents. And you can go with Al and Jamie anywhere you want when they're home for the holidays."

"But you won't give me the one thing that would make me happy." Lily stared at him.

Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry. I can't."

Lily went cold-eyed, and then said, "Is it because of Mr. Malfoy? Is he urging you to stay away from Mum? I remember that Mum was upset when Al and Scorpius became friends. She never liked the Malfoys."

"No reason for her to," Harry murmured. He thought of mentioning that Lucius Malfoy had tried to kill Ginny, but he wasn't sure that Ginny had ever told that story to Lily, and in general, she didn't like him mentioning aspects of the past that were too dark in front of the kids. Harry could certainly understand that. "But no, Mr. Malfoy just wants me to stand up for myself. I'm doing it now, in fact," he added, a little bewildered. He could remember a time when he was so beaten down that he would have promised to consider getting back together with Ginny, just to make Lily happy.

Lily stared at him some more, and she said, "Mum said one time that you were probably gay."

Harry gaped at her. "What?" he finally asked. It came out so softly that he didn't know if Lily heard him, but maybe she would have continued talking even without encouragement, because the words were spilling out of her now.

"She said that you always wanted to spend time with Uncle Ron, and you spent all your time around male Aurors, and you never wanted to spend time with _her_. And you weren't interested enough in her. And you never made comments about women that she expected to hear." Lily didn't know what half of that meant, Harry thought. She was just repeating things that she'd heard Ginny say.

But that was hurtful enough.

Harry had had no idea that Ginny thought he was gay. He took a deep, difficult breath. He'd decided that their marriage broke up because he was at his job so much, and because they didn't know each other as well when they got married as they needed to. He'd never known that she thought anything like this.

Ginny might have said it without thinking about it. She might have apologized and told Lily not to tell Harry immediately afterwards. Harry didn't think she'd told Lily that because she really wanted to insult him or because she thought he would ever hear it.

And Lily had said it out of anger, too, not because she meant it.

He thought he heard Malfoy's voice whisper in the back of his head. _How many excuses are you going to make for them? How many times are they going to get away with this because you're too idiotic to hold them to the standards they hold you to? How is it that they can be angry but you never get to? _

Harry clenched his fingers around the bottom of his mug and managed not to throw it. Now the git was invading Harry's head when he wasn't even here! On the other hand, maybe he'd left a charm that would speak his words to Harry when Harry started slipping from the strict road that Malfoy had laid out for him.

Harry shook his head sharply. He'd never heard of such a spell, and he had no idea if it existed. What mattered was that Lily still waited for an answer, and she was trembling, as though she thought Harry might lash out at her.

But Harry had no intention of making his daughter part of this conflict, even if Ginny had, and even if he did it accidentally, like he thought Ginny had. Harry just looked into Lily's face and said softly, "I'm not gay. I did love your mother. But we aren't getting back together."

"There's no reason _not _to!" Lily leaned forwards. "It's what I want, and what Jamie and Al want, too." Her voice dropped. "Couldn't I get what I want, just for once?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, Lily. I do want to make up for the things I did to you in the past. I'm sorry. But I can't get back together with your mum."

Lily again whirled and ran to her room. Harry listened just long enough to hear the door slam, and then he cast a Silencing Charm that would travel with him and keep anyone from hearing his words unless he spoke directly to them. When he got to the drawing room, he cast another Silencing Charm on the door.

Then he threw Floo powder into the fire. It seemed that he and Ginny had several things to discuss.


	11. One Hell of a Conversation

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—One Hell of an Uncomfortable Conversation_

"Ginny."

Ginny came to the fireplace frowning, her fingers more stained with ink than ever, a long streak of it near her lips that she seemed to have forgotten to clean off. She paused when she saw Harry, and shook her head. "So you couldn't even keep from arguing with Lily for two hours?" she muttered. "Somehow, I manage it most days."

"Lily told me what she really wanted," Harry said.

Ginny narrowed her eyes, and stepped back as if she needed to see more of him than his head floating in the fire. She might look, Harry thought. That didn't mean she would see it. "What? I thought she wanted to go flying. Was that just a mask for the desire to go over to your house for some other reason?" Her voice changed. "I hope you didn't get her a horse, Harry. I know she wanted one, but I don't have the space and the food to keep an Abraxan, or even one of the smaller ones—"

"No," Harry interrupted, while his hear beat a strong, peculiar rhythm in his chest. _He _hadn't had any idea that Lily wanted a horse. Was that another of the desires she'd mentioned that no one ever listened to?

But he forced the guilt away, because the guilt wouldn't help him when dealing with Ginny right now. He needed the support of his strength.

"She told me that she wanted us to get back together," Harry said. "And when I told her it was impossible because we argued too much and we were happier apart, she asked me if I was gay."

Ginny paused again, the way she had when Harry asked if Lily had her permission to come over earlier. Then she said, "You—did you _say _something about Charlie? There's no reason for her to come out with it."

"As a matter of fact," Harry said evenly, "Malfoy was over when Lily came. He's paying me back for the life-debt that Scorpius owes me. I was the one who saved him when he fell, and Malfoy's determined that he not turn thirteen with the debt hanging over him. Some Malfoy reason that I don't understand. But more than that," he added, because Ginny was opening her mouth, and he knew she would pursue this conversational tangent and turn everything else aside if she could. "Lily told me that _you _said I was probably gay."

There was a short, painful silence between them. Ginny's face had turned scarlet. Harry could feel every heartbeat thudding through him.

Part of him hadn't believed Lily, had thought that maybe she was making it up for the attention or transferring her own suspicions to Ginny, but Harry knew full well that Ginny would have denied it immediately if she hadn't said it. Instead, she swallowed and stared at Harry, laying a hand on her heart.

"I never meant it as an insult," Ginny said at last. "Just an explanation. And—and I'd forgotten I'd mentioned it in front of her. I was rambling to myself and she heard it. I'm sorry, Harry."

"You never mentioned it to me before," Harry said. His heartbeat was still painful. He didn't think he would like to try standing up now, or moving around. "Don't you think you should have discussed it with _me _first, before you tried discussing it with our daughter?"

"There wasn't anything to discuss," Ginny muttered. "It was just—an idea I had. Not one that made much sense, but one that I couldn't let go of."

Harry licked his lips. "Then you don't believe it?" That would ease some of the pain, if she hadn't believed it, had just rambled on about it, as she'd said, and it had been one of the random, obsessive ideas of the kind that sometimes plagued Harry, like that he could have saved Fred if he had just noticed that the stone wall was about to tumble over.

Ginny bowed her head.

"Gin?" Harry wished he could crawl through the fireplace and take her in his arms, but the nickname seemed to break something in her. She whirled around and glared hard enough at him that Harry flinched.

"What else was I _supposed _to think, Harry?" she snapped. "You spent _all your time _around other men! I never even heard you _talk _about an Auror who was a woman! You have Hermione for a friend, sure, but still. And you and I…when was the last time we made love, Harry? A few months before we got divorced? And how long before _that_?"

Harry gestured helplessly. "I don't know." It was true that he couldn't remember feeling very passionate towards Ginny lately, but he had assumed that had a lot to do with getting older and being so busy. Hard to want to make love when he was stumbling into bed, head still on fire from the sights he'd seen or the potions he'd taken to counteract the pain of multiple curses.

"I thought…it was normal for marriages to get less passionate as people got older," he tried, as Ginny stared coldly at him.

Ginny laughed, and it was cold, too. "Have you noticed less passion with Ron and Hermione? With Bill and Fleur? Hell, even with my parents? With _anyone _except us? No, Harry, I just think that sex has never been very important to you."

"Then that's it," Harry said, who had to admit that it was a long time since he'd felt anything like the monster inside his chest that he'd felt when he was sixteen and Ginny was dating other boys. "That I'm not very interested in sex. Not that I'm gay. Not that you had to divorce me because I was."

"You think being gay is a bad thing?" Ginny tossed her hair out of her eyes, her face so brilliant a red that Harry didn't even know if it came from embarrassment or anger. "I thought you would never say anything like that, not when one of your _heroes _was gay."

Harry opened his mouth to retort that he hadn't known Dumbledore was gay until long after the man was dead—

And then stopped. Because he was doing it again, said a voice in his thoughts that sounded more like his own and less like Malfoy. Letting Ginny take over the terms of the conversation, turn it around and make it about _her _instead of what he wanted to discuss.

"This has nothing to do with whether I think being gay is a good thing," Harry said, and his voice had lowered until Ginny had to take a step nearer the fire to hear him. "It has to do with the fact that you told our daughter that you thought I was gay, and never discussed it with me. And even if you only said it once, you made a large enough deal of it that she's still thinking it's the reason I won't get back together with you. And since Malfoy was here, she thinks that he's my _boyfriend _or something. You had no right, Ginny."

"You _weren't there _for me, Harry."

"I was an Auror when you married me—"

"That's not what I mean!" There was a cascade of tears starting to slide their way down Ginny's face, and she batted angrily at them, although she never took her eyes from Harry's face. "You were never there _emotionally_. You just smiled absently at me and said that everything I wanted was fine. You were sympathetic when I had problems with my job, when I had to quit Quidditch because I'd had Lily and the Harpies got a new Seeker, but you never really cared about my problems. You just were _absent _all the time. Body in the chair, mind somewhere else. What was I supposed to _think_? I thought you had another lover, was what I thought. But since you never talked about spending time with any other woman, I thought you were gay and in love with a man."

Harry clasped his hands in front of him. Ginny had never spoken so openly about this before. He'd thought the reason they got divorced was almost all because of his job and the arguments they had.

"Then I want you to tell Lily that," he said. "That I wasn't there for you and that's the reason you divorced me, not that I'm gay."

"Why does it matter so much?" Ginny dropped her hands and glared at him, the tears still bright on her face. "Being gay isn't a bad thing."

And Harry lost his temper. It had been so long since the last time that he didn't recognize the strange falling sensation inside his head, or the way his own voice rasped when he started speaking, but Ginny did, from the way she started back and watched him warily.

"You're acting like I _have _to be," he hissed at her. "Like there's no other _possible _explanation for not being passionate enough for you. It couldn't have anything to do with my childhood, could it, or using up all my emotions in my job, or trying to show sympathy for you and just not being good at it? No, it has to be that I was gay, that I never should have married you in the first place, that I was cheating on you with a male lover. It shows that you never understood me in the first place, if you think I would fucking _cheat _on you. And it can't be that you were never all that interested in me, either, and we didn't know each other well enough to get married. No, it has to be all my fault."

Ginny stared at him, mouth slightly open. Then she shut it with a click and said, "So, are you or not?"

"It's none of your sodding business now, is it?" Harry leaned back from the fireplace, his head whirling. "But I never cheated on you, and I never _would have. _Fuck, Ginny, if you hated me so much and you thought I was hiding everything and you never trusted me enough to talk to me about this, why not divorce me when the kids were small? Before we had kids?"

"I was in love with you!" Ginny took a step towards the fireplace. "I thought you were cheating on me, fine, I should have talked to you about that. But _I _was in love with _you_."

"And I was the same way," Harry said back. His voice sounded gritty, now, with all the yelling he was keeping back. Yelling might break the Silencing Charm and travel to Lily's room, and she shouldn't have to hear this. They'd already treated her too much like an adult, involved her too much in what should have been an adult affair. "Maybe I was shit at showing it, but I thought you were happy, and I was happy until the last few years, and I was never, _ever _unfaithful."

"Then why didn't you ever want to spend time in bed with me?" Ginny's eyes were wide and pleading.

Harry rubbed his face with his hand. Shit, things would be easier if _he _knew the answer to that question.

But he could only repeat what he had thought before. "I thought it was normal for the desire to—to sleep together all the time to fade as you got older. And I was tired, and there was never enough _time. _I just didn't make time for it the way I should have." He held back the temptation to apologize again, though. He'd never heard this before, that Ginny wished they'd spent more time in bed together. _He_ wasn't the one who needed to apologize.

"And you can't see why I thought you were gay?" Ginny was putting her hands on her hips.

"No! _Fuck_, no." Harry would have bolted to his feet and glared at her, but that would break the Floo connection, if he took his head out of the fire. He settled for just glaring at her on the level he was at. "I would never have thought you were gay because you spent a lot of time with the Harpies. Why did you think I was?"

"For all the reasons I told you." Ginny stared at him. "And I think that you denied it too quickly, and maybe you are."

"I'm not fucking gay," Harry said. "I wasn't fucking other men while we were married. And now, like I said, it's none of your business anymore, so _sod off_."

"What am I supposed to tell Lily?" Ginny looked like she was on the verge of throwing her hands up in the air.

"That's your problem," Harry said. "But you shouldn't be bringing our bloody children into our bloody divorce, anyway."

"Don't you swear at me." Ginny puffed up like a sea urchin.

"_Listen_," Harry said. His mouth was dry and bitter, and he thought he would start panting in a second. "I'm not the one who kept secrets, who _revealed _those secrets to our children, who was so upset and so furious that I couldn't even tell the truth decently _to my spouse_. Maybe we would have been better able to keep our marriage together if you'd told me about all this shit earlier, Ginny. But you didn't, and it smoldered and made everything sour, and now it's too late."

"What was I supposed to think?" Ginny turned her back on him, but Harry could still make out her muffled words. "You were gone all the time, you were tired when you got home, you could barely stand to _touch _me—"

"Maybe think that you could _ask me_?" Harry shook his head. "Shit, I would have been willing to take Veritaserum if you'd asked for it."

"Not now," Ginny said, turning around like a serpent.

"Not now," Harry agreed, staring at her. "Then."

"I didn't know that." Ginny breathed the words like a prayer. "I never knew—enough about you. I never got enough, I could never _feel _enough—"

"And that was some of my fault," Harry said. "I told you I wasn't very good at that. But it was some of yours. If you'd told me—"

"I don't see that it's any of your business why I wouldn't tell you, any more than it's mine if you're gay now!"

"It is if you talk about it often enough that our daughter thinks that's the reason we got divorced!"

"I didn't know she thought about it so much." From the way Ginny folded her arms, Harry suspected that was the closest he would get to an apology from her. "But I can't change the fact that I said it. I'm not going to Memory Charm it out of her mind, or anything."

"Fuck, Ginny! Like I would ask you to do that." Harry rubbed his face again. The argument was falling into the same stupid pattern it always did, he thought. It was like they couldn't _hear _each other. Ginny didn't know why he was upset at being called gay, and he didn't understand why she couldn't have _told him._.

"It sounded like you might."

"Stop being ridiculous," Harry said, the gritty tone creeping back into his voice even though he'd thought he was keeping it out. "Fuck. The thing is, I don't want you to say that to Lily again. If she asks _you_ why we're not getting back together, tell her about the arguments or anything else, but don't—don't say that again."

Ginny squinted at him. "The more you deny it, the more someone could think you are."

Harry pulled his head out of the fire, and it spluttered and died, ending the Floo call. He stood up on shaking legs and folded his arms. He'd _had _to do that, or he knew he would have drawn his wand.

His fights with Ginny had never got physical, even when they spent the whole evening in the same room, in freezing silence. He wasn't sure why it had escalated so much, so fast, now.

A moment later, he sighed. No, he did know why, and he wasn't going to lie to himself. Ginny had been involving the children before the divorce started. Maybe she'd said the same thing to Al and Jamie, too. And she had refused to listen to him when he told her not to, or when he said he wasn't gay.

_She just never listens. _

Harry swallowed. When they were still married, one of three things would have happened. They would have ignored each other until they felt ready to start talking again, but without things being forgotten or forgiven. Or he would have apologized, because the arguments were so stupid that they weren't worth holding a grudge over. Or he would have left on an Auror mission and when he came back, Ginny would be a little softened, glad to see him again, and glad that he was still alive.

He tended to feel a little guilty either way, because he focused so much on the mission when he was working that he almost never thought of Ginny, and the other ways—well, what mature adult gave someone else the silent treatment or had arguments that idiotic in the first place?

But now, he didn't have to feel guilty. He got to define _himself. _Ginny might have suspicions, but she didn't get to tell him that he was gay and didn't know it, or gay and in denial. Harry was _himself. _What he said he was was what he was. It was like if Ginny had suddenly decided that he really wanted to be a Quidditch player instead of an Auror, and had been secretly pining after professional Seekerdom all these years. Just because she thought it didn't make it real.

Harry passed his hand across his face. He might not have repaired things with his ex-wife, but at least he knew how to act now. And he was going to try and repair things with Lily, too. He went and knocked at her door again, calling out when she didn't answer, "Do you want dinner?"

Silence.

Harry went to call Kreacher. He would have the little elf make Lily's favorite food and leave it outside her door under a Warming Charm. That way, she would at least get something to eat if she came out. He would also set a charm that would warn him if Lily came out into the corridor, further than a few steps, and wake him up.

Because right now, he was going to _bed. _His head still reeled from lack of sleep, from emotional exhaustion, and from all the things he'd done today, yanked one way and another.

As he clapped his hands and summoned Kreacher, he had to shake his head. He was wondering if Malfoy would be proud of him.

_Like that matters. He might be happy that I'm closer to paying the debt off, and that's the only thing that's important. _

_It matters a lot more if I'm proud of _myself.

Harry had to take a minute to consider it, but then he nodded. _Yeah. I am._


	12. Settling the Matter

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twelve—Settling the Matter_

Harry opened his eyes and rolled over. For a second, he thought it was because the ward outside Lily's room had tripped, which must have meant she was coming out. He sat up, licking his lips and running his fingers through his hair to try and get rid of some of the messiness.

Then he became aware that, instead, an owl sat on the table beside his bed, staring at him. It was the same owl that had delivered Malfoy's letters to him other times, so Harry assumed it was here for the same reason this time. He blinked and frowned a little. Had something happened to delay Malfoy? Did this mean that he wouldn't be coming back next week, the way he had said he would? Or had he decided that he just didn't want to have anything more to do with Harry, and the life-debt wasn't that important after all?

Harry rolled his eyes at himself a minute later and held his hand out for the letter. No, Malfoy wouldn't decide that, after the big deal he had made about the life-debt and finding a way to pay it. He might do stupid shit, but he wouldn't give up on this.

The owl handed him the letter and then looked slowly around his bedroom. A second later, it focused on him, and all its feathers fluffed out.

"I just moved in!" Harry protested, then sighed. _Now look at me, defending myself to owls instead of listening to my children._

He shook his head and tore the envelope open.

_Potter,_

_I find that I don't trust you to conduct yourself with good sense in the time that I'm gone. I will not come this weekend, as that is the private time you wish to spend with your daughter, and I understand this. But I will come back later today. I presume that she will be gone back to her harridan mother by then, as the visit was supposed to last only one evening._

_Draco Malfoy._

Harry shook his head again. It wasn't up to him, but if Malfoy wanted to spend time shuffling between Harry's house and his much richer Manor, Harry reckoned it was his choice.

There was no reason for the ridiculous feeling of warmth in his chest, he thought. It was just because no one had done something specifically _for him _in a long time, and he could guess what it meant that Malfoy was putting himself to this degree of inconvenience.

_But that's just the life-debt. It's not like it means anything._

Harry sighed. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to live with a conscience that didn't deflate all his pretensions.

He carefully set the letter aside and looked up to tell the owl there was no reply, only to find it flapping out the door of his room. He snorted. Of course it knew there was no reply. When Draco Malfoy ordered, what could the rest of the world do but obey?

The thrum in his ears let him know that Lily had tripped the ward this time. Harry stood up and cast a Flattening Charm on his hair. Later in the day it would stick up like maddened pine needles in reaction, but right now, it made him look a little more natural, and that was the important thing.

He came around the corner, and Lily, who was standing in the middle of the corridor with her hands on her hips, glanced up and sniffed at him. "You look like you just went and had a shag with someone," she said.

Harry gaped at her. Then he swallowed and said carefully, "Is that another thing your mum said in front of you?"

"It's just something I heard." Lily's eyes were bright and mutinous. "I want to go home now. And I don't want you punishing Mum for what I said."

Harry thought about that for a few seconds, and then decided to say nothing. He thought it was the only fair way he could act, or otherwise he was dragging his kids into the divorce as much as Ginny had. "Fine," he said. "Did you want anything to eat before you leave?"

"The food you left was enough," Lily said, turning towards the drawing room. She stopped for a long second, though, which made Harry wonder if she'd forgotten something in her room. Then she added, ungraciously, without looking over her shoulder, "Thank you."

Harry nodded, and then said, "You're welcome," since Lily had started walking without turning back to him.

Lily fidgeted for long moments in front of the Floo, playing with the powder and letting it run through her fingers. Harry waited, his heart feeling as though it might beat its way out of his chest. If she was thinking of apologizing, or just saying something else that might clarify things between them and help them both to heal, then he was all for it.

But in the end, Lily turned back to him and shrugged, then started to toss the powder in the fireplace.

Of _course _that was the moment the flames chose to turn green and spit Malfoy out.

Malfoy caught his balance gracefully despite the lack of room between the hearth and the floor, and despite Lily standing there. He eyed her in silence before he turned to Harry. Harry shrugged himself. He hadn't told Malfoy to come this early, when Lily might still be here. The git could bear the consequences of showing up, if there were any.

"Oh, great, he's here again," Lily muttered, and tossed her Floo powder in in turn and vanished while Harry was still opening his mouth. Whether he would have scolded her or not, he didn't know.

Malfoy turned to Harry. "Ah," he said, based on either Lily's behavior or invisible signals in Harry's face, Harry couldn't be sure. "So the first thing we need to work on is your relationship with your daughter."

"I thought the first thing was saying no," Harry snapped. "And we had a perfectly lovely time without you, I thought you should know."

Malfoy gave him a weary look, and turned towards the kitchen. "I hope you were never in charge of hostage negotiations for the Ministry," he said over his shoulder. "You would give yourself away in a minute."

"You're saying that I'm an awful liar," Harry muttered as he trailed along behind him.

"If you must put it in the baldest words possible, yes," Malfoy said, and paused and stared into the kitchen. Harry wondered what he was looking at _this _time. Kreacher had either washed all the dishes and put them away or taken them back to Grimmauld Place to be washed, so it wasn't like there was a problem with it being clean. Malfoy turned back towards him with a complex expression. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Harry said. "Especially not an explosion in the kitchen," he added. Maybe he was a horrible liar, but that meant he might distract Malfoy by pretending to hide a different kind of truth.

Malfoy's eyes were as hard to face as the sun. "Tell me," he said. "How can I help you regain your confidence and balance with your family if you don't tell me anything?"

Harry lifted his hands. "I thought you were upset about the state of the kitchen," he said. "Surely teaching me regular habits is important, too?"

Malfoy hissed under his breath. "You are _childish_," he informed the kitchen, and walked over to the cabinet that he'd put that spell concealing the fresh food in the back of. "Childish, and you would probably perish without me to take care of you." He darted another look at Harry, as if daring him to disagree.

Harry took a seat at the table and beamed at him. He had to admit that it was nice to have someone prepare food for him who wasn't a house-elf and thus wouldn't cause Hermione to yell. And Malfoy seemed to have given up going after Lily and what had happened when she was here.

"Potter."

Harry flinched a little when Malfoy rounded on him. _Maybe not. _

"You agreed to this arrangement, and I thought it was working so far." Malfoy's voice was intense, his body wavering as though he was leaning out a window. "Now you're turning your back on it. I could perhaps help you even if you were ignoring me. I could speak, and hope some of the words got through. But I can't help you if you are _lying _to me."

Harry closed his eyes, the familiar sense of helplessness assailing him. What was the right thing to do? On the one hand, he had to let Malfoy repay Scorpius's debt, since he'd already agreed to that anyway, but on the other hand, speaking about Ginny and Lily would betray them.

_Well, I can at least tell him about Ginny. And what Lily said, without actually complaining about her. _He didn't feel that he owed Ginny any more loyalty than he would a stranger passing in the street.

He opened his eyes, and started when he discovered Malfoy only a centimeter away from him, staring raptly into his face. Harry leaned back and looked away and cleared his throat. He had always been uncomfortable with attention that focused, whether it was coming from a fan or a friend.

Or someone who had been an enemy at one point and was now…what? A helper? Harry wondered if he could classify Malfoy that way without making him angry.

_Well, screw that. I have the right to think of him the way I want to, as long as I let him pay the debt._

Harry stood up, to put some distance between them nonetheless, and said over his shoulder, "Lily told me that she wanted me to get back together with Ginny. I told her that wouldn't be happening."

"In words exactly that blunt and forthright, I'm sure," Malfoy murmured, but he held up a hand when Harry turned on him. "I won't comment again while you tell the story, Potter, if it's so important to you. Just remember that you should _tell the story_."

Harry sighed, and spoke on, feeling for the words. "Lily—wasn't happy. She said that no one listened to her, and then she decided that since I wouldn't, I must be gay. Apparently Ginny had said that in front of her, and it was a theory Lily picked up."

He glanced over when Malfoy made no comment; despite what he'd said, he'd anticipated _something _at that. Malfoy had a puffy blush on his throat, and Harry wondered if he was gay or suspected himself of it. It would certainly be a reason that he was reluctant to speak of his divorce from Greengrass.

Harry opened his mouth to offer some kind of apology, and Malfoy cleared his throat and waved his hand. The blush faded as if it had never been. "Continue."

Harry shrugged. "So I talked to Ginny. It turned out that she'd thought I was gay for a long time because I spent so much time with the Aurors and had male friends, other than Hermione." He shook his head. That still seemed so strange to him. Ron had mostly male friends, too; in fact, he might have fewer female friends than Harry, since Hermione was his wife. "And she thought I cheated on her. We yelled at each other, and I…" He sighed. "I feel a lot better about the divorce than I did. If she keeps thinking that I'm cheating on her, then I'm better off out of there."

"Yes, you are."

Harry cocked his head at Malfoy, who had leaned across the table and was watching him with an almost scarily intense look. "Is that what you wanted to know? Because that's all that happened, bar some arguments with Lily that we don't need to get into."

"You stood up for yourself, Potter," Malfoy said, voice low and soothing as if he thought Harry might throw him out now, instead of when he'd first shown up. "That's all I wanted."

Harry snorted. "Really," he said dryly. He thought Malfoy had wanted a great deal more than that.

Malfoy shrugged smoothly. "It will do for a beginning," he said. "In the meantime, when was the last time you ate?"

Harry had to think. "I had tea with Lily yesterday."

"Describe what you had for tea." Malfoy took out parchment and ink and looked at Harry the way he thought Rita Skeeter would have at one time.

"Hot chocolate," said Harry, and ignored Malfoy's stare. Really, what the fuck else was he supposed to say, besides the truth? Although he supposed Malfoy wouldn't appreciate it if Harry swore at him.

Malfoy gave a negative little hum under his breath and wrote something down. "And the scones that we brought here from the Ministry? Or the food in the cabinet?" He glanced over his shoulder, making Harry realize only then that he hadn't taken any food down from the cabinet, even though the door still stood open. Presumably he'd been checking to see if there was any gone.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Look, I _know _that I don't get hungry as often as I should. I didn't get a lot to eat when I was a kid, and I don't get to eat often when I'm working on Auror cases."

Malfoy dropped his parchment on the table and uncoiled as though he was the snake on Slytherin's banner come to life. "Really," he whispered. "Remind me to write a letter of complaint to the _Prophet _as soon as possible, asking for higher taxes."

Harry stared at him. Sometimes he thought it was _him_, that he was just stupid, and other times he knew it was Malfoy, that the git wouldn't make sense even if Harry knew six other languages and had Ron's brilliance at chess.

"I didn't realize that the Ministry was so poor that it couldn't afford to buy _tea _for its Aurors," Malfoy continued smoothly.

Harry rolled his eyes again. "Come off it, Malfoy. Of course I know that they would let me have food if I asked them. I just need to start asking more often. I get busy and I forget."

Malfoy's eyes were hooded. "You're doing rather well in standing up for yourself and saying no," he said. "In the meantime, you could use practice of another type. Stand up and get your cloak."

"Without breakfast, even?" Harry asked in a fake horrified tone, but stood up and moved to the pegs by the door.

"Where I'm taking you, there's plenty of food."

And that seemed all he was going to say about it. Harry shook his head as he draped his cloak over his shoulders. Malfoy stood waiting for him, his arms folded loosely. He never looked anywhere but at Harry. It was unnerving.

_I don't know how you're going to make me more mindful about my eating habits, unless you attach a different bell to my wrist with orders to go off every few hours, _Harry thought, but he didn't mention it. With his luck, Malfoy wouldn't have thought of it, and Harry's words would be just the push he would need to do it.

Malfoy bowed Harry out the front door, so Harry decided they wouldn't be Flooing to this mysterious place. Then Malfoy held out his arm, haughtily. Harry blinked at him. "How can I Side-Along you when I don't know where we're going?" he asked.

Malfoy closed his eyes and shook his head a little. "I'm going to Side-Along you," he said. He didn't _say _the word "idiot," but Harry could feel its ghostly presence hovering all around them.

Or maybe not so ghostly, given the way the muscle in the side of Malfoy's jaw was ticking. Harry swallowed cautiously and took his arm. The muscles shifted under his grip, and Harry thought they would start ticking, too.

But instead, Malfoy spun on the spot and vanished, and Harry had to admit, in the middle of his usual nausea over the pull through space and darkness, that he was good at Apparition, strong and controlled.

Harry opened his eyes in a place he definitely recognized. It was the same small alley off Diagon where he and Malfoy—uninvited—had Apparated the other night when the Spiders had tried to trap him.

Harry looked at Malfoy. "Do you think I need to see the crime scene or something?"

"No," Malfoy said simply. He looked at Harry for a second, and narrowed his eyes. Then he pulled Harry's hood back from his face.

"_Hey_," Harry protested, and not just because that made his hair, bereft now of every trace of the Flattening Charm, stand up even more. "I have to keep my face hidden when I visit Diagon Alley and it's not on official Auror business."

"Why?" Malfoy asked.

Harry glared at him, but Malfoy seemed to be made of stone, and not understand how weird his lack of knowledge was. Harry finally snorted and answered. "Because people mob me when they see the scar, that's why."

"That's the thing I want you to face," Malfoy said, taking his arm. "You need to build up your own sense of self-worth. You need to _face _the worship they project at you, and the slavering adoration, and find the true worth they'd accord you at the bottom of it."

"They wouldn't accord me any _worth _at all," Harry snapped, pulling back on the hold. But just like when they'd Apparated, Malfoy was too strong to break from. Harry slumped back with a little hiss. "You don't understand. It's all false. All of it."

"Would you say that your marriage with Weasley was entirely false because she believed you were gay?" Malfoy asked.

His voice had jumped on the last word. Harry looked at him with narrowed eyes and saw that his pulse was, too. _Huh_. Malfoy probably was gay, then. Harry wondered if he didn't want to admit it because he thought Harry would go all funny about it. But Harry had no problem with it. He just wasn't, that was all.

"Of course not," Harry said. "We had good times. And we have the kids."

"And their adoration is not entirely false because some is slavish and some exaggerated," Malfoy countered quietly. "Come on. I'm going to take you to meet the people you saved."

Harry hesitated. But Malfoy's eyes were implacable, and there was a frightened, frustrated stirring at the bottom of Harry's stomach, something new but compounded of emotions he'd felt before. What _would _it be like to walk Diagon Alley as an ordinary person?

"All right," he finally agreed, and won a brief but genuine smile from Malfoy before they stepped out of the alley.


	13. Breakfast in Diagon Alley

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirteen—Breakfast in Diagon Alley_

"Thank you." Malfoy smiled at the man who showed them to a table inside the Leaky Cauldron, nodding as graciously as though he ate at the place all the time instead of the posh restaurants that Harry was certain he frequented.

For that matter, it was ridiculous to have someone show them to a table in a _pub, _but the boy, related to Tom by his height and his eyes, had insisted on doing so the minute they stepped through the door. Harry, already bright red to the ears because of all the staring people had done in the middle of Diagon Alley, had let him do it. And Malfoy, of course, probably didn't even realize this wasn't the way things were normally done, because he was so used to service.

Now, though, Harry shook his head at Malfoy. "You really think I can be just like anyone else?" he asked, tossing his head at the door. "After that gauntlet we walked through outside?"

"Don't be absurd, Potter. When you run a gauntlet, people beat you with heavy sticks, doing their best to kill you. The most those people might have done was kiss your feet." Malfoy leaned back in his chair, taking off his cloak, and looked at Harry thoughtfully. "I see another thing we need to work on is your sense of proportion. Perhaps that paranoia serves you when you chase criminals, but it's no wonder that you find yourself stuck in the house and unable to interact with anyone, if you think of them as your enemies."

Harry hunched his shoulders up around his ears and stared at the tabletop, at a hole that looked as though it might have been left by a curse that had burned through the wood, or maybe just worn down through the presence of countless mugs over the years. He wondered how he could explain to Malfoy that he would _rather _have heavy sticks beating on him. That would give him enemies to fight, and it would let him understand his own feelings.

Now, though, he didn't understand the embarrassment and the fear and the shame that overcame him every time he had people staring at him. It didn't matter why they were staring at him, whether they thought he was insane or a hero or someone they should buy drinks for. He didn't like the attention in general. If he knew that no arrest he made would ever land him on the front page of the _Prophet _again, no matter how big it was, he would have relaxed with a long sigh of joy.

"Listen."

Harry started and looked up at Malfoy, who was reaching out towards him. Harry wondered for a guilty second how long Malfoy had been speaking without him being aware of it. He tried to make up for his inattention by clearing his throat and sitting up. "Yes? Listen, do you want a drink?"

"In a second." Malfoy's eyes were deep, but his mouth relaxed, and the angle of his face as he watched Harry was thoughtful. "You don't care that no one's actually asked for your autograph or any other nonsense, do you? You want them to leave you alone and treat you like an ordinary person."

Some of the tension departed Harry in a rush after all, which left room for anger to come in. He sat up and clenched his hands on the table in front of him. "If you could know that, why did you ask me to come here?" he asked in an angry hiss. "If you knew that I would be uncomfortable—"

"Discomfort is worth getting over," Malfoy said, and made a little motion with his hand that could have indicated the other customers in the pub as well as those outside it. "_Think_ about your discomfort, Potter, don't just feel it. I agree that it would be awkward if people mobbed you at our sons' Quidditch game, as you once told me they did. But they're not doing that here. Yet you react as though they were. Why?"

Harry thought about it, then stood up. "I'm going to get a butterbeer," he said to Malfoy. "What about you?"

Malfoy stared at him, then sighed. "Firewhisky. I accept no lesser drink." As Harry turned away, he added, "And I expect you to stop running away from my questions, Potter."

Harry scowled lightly as he walked through the silent room, and saw the eyes fixed on him. No one had gone back to what they were doing yet, whether that was drinking or eating or talking to the person across the table from them. All of them waited in panting silence for what he was going to do next.

_I'm going to get drinks for myself and Malfoy, that's what I'm going to do, _Harry thought, and ordered the drinks in a loud, clear voice. There was a low murmur of voices then, as the smarter parts of his audience grasped that he wasn't here for anything extraordinary.

By the time he turned around with the drinks, made by Tom's worshipful young relative, Harry had made up his mind. Malfoy had already understood part of the truth. That meant Harry could at least _try _to tell him the rest, no matter how stupid it sounded.

He put the Firewhisky in front of Malfoy, who considered it for long seconds, and then held up the mug and turned it back and forth near the light, although what the hell he was looking for, Harry had no idea. Finally, Malfoy lowered the mug, nodded, and said, "Acceptable."

"You haven't tasted it yet," Harry had to point out.

"I'll drink it, but I'm thirstier for an answer to my question," Malfoy said. "Why do you hate them so much when all they're doing is looking at you?"

"I'm hungry," Harry said, and put his mug down after a long swallow of butterbeer. "You shouldn't drink on an empty stomach, anyway. What do you want?"

Malfoy reached out and laid a light hand on his wrist. He was frowning at Harry as though he was a rare butterfly who wasn't cooperating by sticking itself on the pin for Malfoy's collection.

"Talk to me," he murmured.

Harry stared at his hand, and then sighed. He'd thought only a minute ago that he could trust Malfoy with part of the truth. Malfoy wouldn't make fun of him even if Harry was acting stupid, he thought. Malfoy had too much riding on paying the life-debt back in a few weeks. Driving Harry away, or making him want to do something other than pay attention to Malfoy's words, wouldn't accomplish his purpose.

"Fine," he said. "I just don't like people paying attention to me. I didn't like it when I was a first-year and almost all of the attention was positive. And I don't like it now, even though you might argue I deserve it. It's not just the people who threaten my kids and won't let me enjoy a simple Quidditch game." He gestured around the pub, and the nearly half the patrons who hadn't gone back to their own conversations, but were watching him in case he jumped up and slew a dragon or something. "It's _them_. I don't like it. I want to be ordinary. I want them to look at something else."

Malfoy stared at him. He cleared his throat for a second. Harry looked down at the table between them, expecting Malfoy to let go of his hand, but Malfoy tightened the hold, although the way he hummed beneath his breath made Harry think he might have done it unconsciously.

"That can't be true," Malfoy finally said.

Harry snorted. Here it came, then, the lack of understanding he had expected from the first. "Why not?" he snapped, tapping his foot against the floor.

"Listen," Malfoy said. "I don't think you're lying to me. But, I mean—you played Quidditch. How could you have done that if you hated people staring at you?"

Harry shrugged, but found himself smiling. "That happened because I was _good _at it. I'd never had anything that I was really good at before. That helped overcome it. And they weren't just watching me. They were watching Wood, and the Weasley twins, and you when you were playing, and everyone else out there. I wasn't alone."

Malfoy frowned, looking even more baffled. "So if someone else had helped you defeat the Dark Lord, you would have been all right with people praising you, too?"

"Not at ease with it, but better," Harry said, nodding. "And the stupid thing is, other people _did _help me defeat him! Ron and Hermione were with me all the way, and I've tried to tell reporters that I couldn't have done it without them, but they just ignore me and go on writing the story the way they've always told it. And Dumbledore was the one who told me what I _really _needed to know to defeat him, and Neville was the one who cut Nagini's head off, and Snape was the one who took the most risks, and McGonagall could defy the Death Eaters even though she'd spent an entire year suffering under them. They're just as heroic as I was! Hell, I couldn't have done it without _you_, even. If you'd told them who I was when they brought us to the Manor, it would have been all over."

Malfoy's cheeks turned a pale, soupy color, and he took several deep breaths. Harry watched him in some concern. He reckoned part of it was the same thing that had made Malfoy upset when they battled the Spiders; he probably didn't think about the war often, and having the memory brought up like this had made him upset.

"Sorry," Harry said. "I didn't mean to make you think you—I don't know. Sorry," he added inadequately. Malfoy already had his breathing under control again, but it made Harry feel sore in the chest to know he had caused even a small part of that.

Malfoy shut his eyes and returned to his normal pale coloring. Then he said, "I did not expect to find you so resistant."

Harry snorted and stared again at their clasped hands. If Malfoy wasn't worried about that, he was. Or at least, he kept noticing it, with the same prickling feeling racing all over his entire body that he had once got when he and Ron were tracking a Dark wizard who pretended to be on the verge of surrendering to them. "I'm just telling you what it is. I hate being stared at. I hate people paying attention to me. I mean," he added, as Malfoy drew his head back and looked at him, "I'd want people to pay enough attention to me to serve me in restaurants and get out of my way when I was running after someone, but I don't want—I don't want anything more than that. The same as everyone else gets. That's fine. That would be fine for the rest of my life."

Malfoy was staring at him, eyes clouded for the first time Harry could remember since they had started the process of paying back the life-debt. He shook his head, not as if he wanted to deny Harry's words, but slowly, slowly. "I've never met anyone like you, Potter," he said. "Only you could say that and make me believe it."

Harry shrugged and made to pull his hand back. Malfoy kept hold of it. _Fine, _Harry thought. He had no idea what Malfoy was doing, but Harry still felt a little bad for reminding him of the war, so he kept still. "You can think of it this way, if you want," he added, struck by a sudden inspiration. "I wasn't ordinary when I was a kid. My relatives knew I was a wizard when I had no idea, so they treated me strangely and I didn't know why. Then I came into the wizarding world and found out that I'm not even normal for someone who can do _magic_. I want to be normal because I've never been that way."

Malfoy reached out, picked up his Firewhisky, and took a long swig. Harry had to laugh. "I'm driving you to drink?"

"I'm thinking," Malfoy said, and turned back to him with a faint frown, finally releasing Harry's hand. "But in the meantime, you're right that _you _didn't have any food recently. Go and find some. I need to think some more." He folded his hands in front of his forehead and bowed his face down so Harry couldn't see any of it, looking at the table.

Harry snorted and stood up. He had allowed Malfoy his fair chance at convincing him. Malfoy couldn't say that Harry hadn't. Harry waved a jaunty little salute at Malfoy and turned away, walking towards the far side of the pub.

The change in the noise warned him before he'd taken many steps. Harry turned around and drew his wand, dropping into a crouch at the last moment and putting a table in between him and the door. It was an empty table, or he wouldn't have chosen it, but people were staring at him now as if he was mental.

Then they were screaming, as the Spiders, white-cloaked this time, stepped through the door and tossed a handful of the black powder high into the air.

Harry didn't dare chance that it was just the fake powder they'd scattered around the "body" at the entrance of Knockturn Alley. He raised his wand and spun it through the sharp, difficult gesture that made the Wind Net spell, chanting the incantation under his breath.

The net swept in from the sides and down, as if it were hanging from the ceiling of the pub. It gathered up all the powder and snapped it up against the ceiling, but not in contact with it, hovering and harmless. The Spiders looked up, gaping. It was obvious they had never expected their trap not to work.

Harry jumped out from behind the table while they were distracted, and got to work.

It didn't take much, not with his opponents still standing there motionless and the people around him just starting to rise from their tables. Harry had done harder spells, in more crowded conditions. He whispered the modified Stunner that one of the Aurors had invented several years ago, and the spell glowed and sprang away from his wand, subdividing again and again into several red beams.

It hit everyone in the room wearing white robes. That included the Spiders, and also a few of Tom's customers. Harry shrugged apologetically at their staring friends as they slumped over the tables. The Stunner could be modified to hit all the people in a room who wore a certain color of robe, useful when they were fighting against the Dark wizards who wanted to imitate Voldemort and made sure their followers all obeyed the same dress code. The caster only had to put the Latin word for the color he wanted into the spell. The one drawback was that anyone else in the room wearing the same color would fall over, too.

Harry set about reviving the innocents he'd Stunned, casting _Incarcerous _spells at the Spiders in between soothing words and pats on the back. For once, his celebrity came in useful; a smile from Harry Potter made some angry people, who might have screamed for much longer at anyone else trying to rescue them, forget what they were about to say. Harry apologized handsomely for bumped heads, too, and caught himself with one hand on the table when he started swaying—probably from lack of food. That charmed the people there, a woman in white robes and her husband. They thought he was leaning over to talk with them _personally_.

Finally, everyone in the pub had been soothed, and someone called for a round of applause since Harry had just saved everyone _again_. Harry grimaced, but managed to turn it into a smile when a camera flashed at him, and waved.

Malfoy came up next to him. His face was smooth and neutral. Harry was glad. If he ended up in the _Prophet _as so many people out with Harry for innocent reasons tended to do, at least he would look good in the meantime.

"Come on," Malfoy said, his hand locking on Harry's arm.

Harry shrugged. "Do you want to come with me to the Ministry again? I have to take this lot there, and there'll be hours of paperwork."

Malfoy paused, and then his hand dropped away. Harry nodded, half-disappointed and half-relieved. He opened his mouth to suggest that Malfoy go back to the Manor, in fact. No knowing how long Harry would be taken up with the Spiders at the Ministry.

"I'll get you some food, and meet you there," Malfoy murmured. He was gone with a swirl of his cloak.

Harry watched him, then shrugged again. If Malfoy wanted to get common pub food, that was his problem.

"Mr. Potter!" It was the woman with the camera, who was indeed from a newspaper, to judge by the breathless speed with which she asked the question and the quill hovering in front of her. "How does it feel to be a hero _again_?"

Harry gave her the fake smile that charmed them, and replied, "I never really stopped," which he knew would charm them, too, and which he had also said before.

Distantly, he wished he could show that moment to Malfoy, who probably hadn't heard it. _See? I do so know how to behave. I'm not going to throw their adoration back into their faces._

But that wouldn't keep him from hating it, every second of it, and thinking wistfully about Ginny's level of ordinariness, or Ron's, or Hermione's. They were so quick to recognize his heroism, why couldn't they recognize that he was _normal, _too?

Harry wasn't sure he had anyone who thought that way about him. Certainly not Ginny, to whom he was a villain and not a hero now. And not his children.

_Malfoy?_

Harry didn't look back as he gathered up the Spiders, floating, and left, because if there was a time and place to find an answer to that question from Malfoy, it was not now.


	14. A Moment Alone

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Fourteen—A Moment Alone_

"Why would they attack you in the middle of a pub?"

Harry rolled his eyes, but kept his voice low and precise, the way that Robards preferred. "I don't think they came there to attack _me, _sir. I did report that," he couldn't help adding, since he had spent over an hour working on the report that now lay on Robards's desk. "I think the pub was a target of opportunity, and they were just as surprised to see me there as I was to see them."

"That doesn't explain how you were able to take them down so quickly."

Harry sat still for a second, because he was afraid that he would say the wrong thing if he spoke right away. His tongue seemed to ache, and he could feel a sour poison in the back of his mouth. He licked his lips, trying to dispel it, trying to realize what it was.

When the realization came to him, he was so startled that he almost fell off the chair.

For the first time in a long time, he was feeling _rage _at another Auror. At Robards, specifically. He wanted to leap up and not just accuse him of not paying attention, but draw his wand. He wanted to leave the room by kicking the door open. He wanted to swear at him, and say things that would probably cost him his job, and he didn't _care _that it would cost him his job. Maybe he would be _glad_ to no longer be an Auror.

He couldn't do that, of course. It was out of the question. He needed this job. And he had to calm the rage and look at Robards as if nothing was wrong, and keep talking.

"I was able to take them down so quickly thanks to the Ministry's excellent training, sir."

Robards flicked his eyes so quickly at Harry that Harry almost missed the weight of his gaze. But he was more practiced at things like this than he used to be, and saw it, and smiled innocently. There wasn't much Robards could say in response to praise.

And satisfaction lay like a boulder in Harry's chest. Normally, he didn't like this kind of complicated byplay. People said things he couldn't follow, and Hermione despaired that he would ever fully understand what irony was.

And maybe this wasn't irony, but he was saying something he didn't believe in, something Robards still couldn't criticize, and it had been _fun._

After cautiously examining him for another few seconds, Robards made a huffing noise, like a buffalo about to charge. "Very well, Potter," he said. "If it's as accidental as you say it was, then questioning the prisoners should reveal that."

Harry wanted to explode, again. He'd been an Auror for almost twenty years, and still his word wasn't good enough for his superior?

But instead, he leaned forwards and took control of the conversation again, saying, "Yes, sir. Is there anything else that you need me for?"

Robards eyed him up and down as if that would tell him something about whatever hidden agenda he suspected Harry of maintaining. Then he shook his head and waved Harry away. "Go and make yourself useful."

"Sir." Harry stood up and bowed, which made Robards stare at him again. Harry felt his head reel, though, and stood up straight again quickly. The last thing he wanted was to faint at Robards's feet. "I'll see you tomorrow."

He stepped through the door and shut it behind him before Robards could start some other series of questions, such as when his wrist-bell would be repaired. For that, he'd have to talk to the Unspeakables, anyway, since they hadn't let Harry know a thing.

Harry leaned against the wall for a second and shut his eyes. He was starting to see what Malfoy meant about letting yourself go too long without food. He had a dark headache, a pounding and flashing of black lights behind his eyes, shadows stabbing in from the corners, and of course the pain.

"Come on."

That was Malfoy's voice, but Harry found it hard to open his eyes. Luckily, Malfoy didn't make him. He just seized his shoulder and began to tow him along.

Harry shook his head and locked his feet for a second, until Malfoy swung around impatiently. Harry held up his hand. "My head really hurts," he said. "I need to sit down for a few seconds and—"

"Eat."

Malfoy was pushing something into his hands. Harry fumbled around the sides of it, or rather the curves of it, and discovered it was a plate. He opened his eyes through main force and found that it was piled with food from the Leaky Cauldron, all of it greasy and all of it heavenly.

He nodded to Malfoy and looked around vaguely. He had the impression that they weren't far from his office, and if that was true, then they could sit down.

"Eat," Malfoy repeated, and slid his shoulder solidly up against Harry's. "I'll brace you while you do."

Harry stopped himself from gaping at Malfoy, but just barely. He dug into his food instead. Thick sandwiches, and bacon, and chips. He thought Malfoy hadn't used a system, just grabbed whatever he thought would suit. That was fine with Harry. He ate, and he ate, and juice dripped down his chin, and all Malfoy did was silently hand him a napkin. He must have stolen that from somewhere else, Harry thought, as he wiped the grease away. There was no way that the Leaky Cauldron had ones that white and neat.

"Thanks, Malfoy," he said, when he was done, and the headache had calmed down to little transparent flashes like wild lightning instead.

He looked at Malfoy, who looked back at him, unsmiling. "Now we are going to your house," Malfoy said, his voice soft but penetrating. "We're going to lock your doors and block your windows to owls and close your Floo connection. And then we are going to _talk_."

Harry swallowed, and not because some food still clung to the sides of his mouth. Malfoy seemed to have decided the same thing Harry did, that talking in public was impossible, because there would always be some distraction, some chance for Harry to prove himself a hero.

But this meant there would be no running away, either.

"All right," he said weakly, and let Malfoy pull him along.

* * *

Malfoy turned away from placing the wards on Harry's Floo connection, and sat down on the couch in the drawing room. Harry sat on one of the chairs, holding his hands still to keep them from tapping on his knee. He felt more nervous than he had when the Spiders burst into the pub, or when he thought Robards was accusing him, subtly, of being involved with the Spiders somehow.

_Why? _

But Harry knew the answer to that, and he wasn't ready to face it right now, either. He just shook his head and said, "All right, is the house warded to your satisfaction?"

"Yes." Malfoy's word was bare and unadorned, and so was the way he was looking at Harry right now. Harry winced. He was becoming more and more convinced that this was a bad idea. Not so much shutting himself into a small space with Malfoy, but agreeing to talk about this. There would be no dodging this if Malfoy had his way.

And Harry didn't think he would like the questions Malfoy asked him, either.

Malfoy nodded once, as if Harry's question needed an extra answer. Then he said, "I want to know why you intervened when the Spiders came into the pub."

Harry opened his mouth, but a gape wouldn't impress Malfoy. Harry could almost predict the way Malfoy would stare at him, instead. He sighed and gave the true answer. "I knew someone was in there, someone who intended harm to people in the pub. I could feel the change in the magic and the noise. And I reacted."

"Without thinking about it?" Malfoy sat with his hands folded in plain sight on his knees, like a Wizengamot judge without the desk.

"Like an Auror," Harry snapped. He hated the feeling that was racing back and forth inside him now, like the feet of real spiders running on his skin. "If there had been another Auror in the pub, they would have done the same thing."

"Maybe not," Malfoy said. "Maybe they would have faltered. Maybe they would have looked around for backup. I doubt they would have noticed the change in the magic and the noise that you described."

"Maybe not," Harry echoed him, on purpose, and had the satisfaction of seeing Malfoy sit up a little and stare at him. "It doesn't matter, does it? That's not the _real _question you wanted to ask."

"It was one of them." Malfoy's voice turned clipped. "Why do you place yourself in the situations that make others regard you as a hero if you hate being thought heroic?"

It was another question that Harry could only snort in reply to. "So I should have let the Spiders just cast any spells they wanted to and terrorize anyone they wanted to?" he demanded. "I don't think they came to the pub looking for me. That was just a coincidence. But once I saw they were there, I couldn't just let it go and wait for someone else to do something."

Malfoy nodded, as if that confirmed a private theory. "If you keep acting heroically, don't be surprised when people think you're a hero."

"Fuck you," Harry snarled, white fire cutting through the lingering remnants of his headache. "It's not like I _asked _for that. And say I sat back and let other people get slaughtered just so that no one would think I was too heroic. That wouldn't diminish the impact of me killing Voldemort. No one is ever going to let me forget that."

"It _was _impressive."

"No, it wasn't!" Harry brought his hands down sharply into his lap. He couldn't believe Malfoy was saying this, _Malfoy, _of all people, who ought to know better. "It was sheer coincidence that he had the Elder Wand and I'd become its master by conquering yours, just like it was coincidence the Spiders walked into the Leaky Cauldron! There's no—so many things could have been different, and then I wouldn't have won! It's not like I won because I was more powerful or I knew some secret about the Dark Arts that he didn't. I didn't even win in a fair _duel. _The Elder Wand just refused to harm me, that's all."

Malfoy laughed, a dark, choking sound, and stood up from his couch to come forwards. Harry remained seated, glaring at him. No one was going to intimidate him just because they were temporarily taller than he was. No, not even by leaning forwards into his face and gripping the arms of his chair, which was what Malfoy did a minute later.

"You're an idiot if you don't see the impressive implications in that last statement," Malfoy whispered. "_The Elder Wand refused to harm me_," he mimicked in a lisping little voice. "How many other people in the world could say that? For how many has it _ever _been true?"

"Every single master the Elder Wand has ever had?" Harry let his voice dip down, taunting a bit. "Even you, if you had known that it belonged to you long enough to take advantage of it."

Malfoy's hands flexed on the arms of his chair, but didn't reach for Harry. His voice remained maddeningly low and controlled, in fact, and the dark tone had left it. Harry hated feeling that he was angrier than Malfoy. He tried to breathe, but the choked feeling was still there in his throat and chest.

"You didn't win because of Dark Arts or because you're so powerful, you said," Malfoy murmured. "That just makes it more romantic for lots of people. Here's the boy who sacrificed himself for everyone and then prevailed without killing in the traditional sense of the word. Here's the boy so pure and good that he doesn't even use the Elder Wand in day-to-day life, he put it away somewhere instead. You _don't _see why you're a figure of inspiration to so many? Why they would, as you said, look at you like you were a hero even if you never captured a criminal again?"

Harry shook his head. He didn't know what to say. It felt like his nostrils were clogged with hot dust that he couldn't sneeze out.

"Let me phrase it a different way," Malfoy murmurs, his voice lower than ever, but more pointed. Harry didn't even know that was _possible. _"If someone else had done exactly what you did—allow them as much help as you had, and as many coincidences—would you admire them? Or would you think that they shouldn't be called a hero?"

_Damn it. _Hermione had asked this question once, and Harry had left because he couldn't answer it. He didn't think Malfoy would let him leave. He shook his head and answered as honestly as he could. "Of course I would think that they deserved some gratitude and attention and praise for it. That's not the same as thinking that people should still be drooling at their feet twenty years later!"

"But you hate all attention directed at you, don't you?" Malfoy's voice was softer, again. He raised his hand, and Harry flinched a little, because it looked like Malfoy might take his shoulder and shake him. Instead, Malfoy touched Harry's hair and examined it critically, as if its ragged state might tell him important things that Harry's own words couldn't.

"Answer me," Malfoy added softly, a few seconds later.

Harry tilted his head back and stared into his eyes. Then he said, "I don't hate _all _of it. I want my friends to ask how I'm doing and to notice when I'm sick, and I hate it when the Ministry just assumes I'm a machine that can do all of the work all of the time. And then I hate it when other Aurors assume that I'll cover their holidays and their little sicknesses and so on when they would never do the same thing for me."

Malfoy sighed and clucked. "But you never ask for the same consideration," he said. "Because you can't have people paying attention to you and thinking that you're stupid or ungrateful, can you? Just like you never disciplined your daughter. Just like you never—before now—told your wife off for her unfair assumptions about you. You don't want them to take advantage of you, but you hate drawing attention to yourself by complaining or arguing even more. Someone might _look _at you. We can't have _that_."

Harry slapped his hand away from the side of his head, the way he now thought he should have the minute Malfoy started touching him. "I do not bloody feel that way about myself!" he snarled into Malfoy's face.

"But you told me you did." Malfoy wasn't backing off. He just looked at Harry like he was a piece of stone that had started to talk. "You told me that you don't want people looking at you. The people in that pub were giving you nothing but positive attention—not gossiping, not asking you for autographs. They looked at you like you were a unicorn dropped to earth among them, did you notice? Rare and interesting, yes, the way that they might look at you if they were just thinking of you as a hero who could answer their needs, but also _beautiful_."

Harry shoved hard, getting Malfoy to step back with a push directly in the middle of his chest, if no other way. Harry stumbled to his feet. His head was swarming, bustling, with the idiotic things Malfoy had said. He needed to get away.

But Malfoy locked the drawing room door with a twist of his wand, and Harry spun back to face him.

"You hate attention," Malfoy said to him, sneering a little. "You're modest. But you're artificially modest, _stupidly _modest. That's the root of it all, isn't it? Why you don't tell your colleagues to find someone else to cover for them. Why you don't argue with the Head Auror when he's keeping you from bed and breakfast. Why you didn't tell your wife that she was wrong about you—"

"I _did_!"

"After a push that even you couldn't ignore," Malfoy said. "After you found out that your trying to stay meek and compliant and agreeing to divorce her when she wanted it hadn't worked, that she was talking about you behind your back and _thinking _about you in ways that you didn't want even while you were still married. That's why you can argue with _me, _too. You think that I already hate you and nothing can change that, so why not do it?

"But you're _afraid _of your friends and your fans and your fellow Aurors. Afraid that they'll turn on you, abandon you, think you're asking for too much. Afraid that they'll look at you and see something that they don't want to associate with anymore."

Harry's heart was going so fast that he hated himself. His face was flushed, and his throat ached. But he couldn't do anything but stare dumbly at Malfoy as Malfoy took a single, long step towards him.

"You're so stupid that you can't even see how much they _love _you." Malfoy shook his head, his eyes bright and savage. "I would _kill _for a tenth of the worship and awe they're extending towards you, Potter, and you don't live with it, you don't even stop acting like a hero, you just keep going and then wailing when they _look _at you. You could discipline your daughter and argue with your wife and convince everyone else to find another hero if you wanted to, but you're too afraid."

Malfoy paused, and took a step backwards. He wasn't panting, but he seemed to draw in on himself, and his voice was low and serious and patient as he held Harry's eyes.

"Who was it, Potter?" he asked. "Who told you that you were worthless, for so long that you still believe it?"

Harry shook his head. He shut his eyes. It wouldn't help him flee, it wouldn't help him shut this out, but he still did it.

"That's what you have to ask yourself," Malfoy said. "And what you have to answer. And you have to remember, if _you_ don't do anything to change things, why should anyone else? They _like _this state of affairs. They can have their hero and their husband who's at fault and all the rest of it, and no one can blame them."

He stepped up beside Harry again. Harry heard his hand come to rest on the door beside his head, but he still didn't open his eyes.

"But some of them hate it," Malfoy said into his ear. "Your daughter is being hurt by it, and I don't imagine your sons are too happy, either. Your friends probably hate it. I wouldn't know. I don't think you have to be afraid that they'll stop loving you because you ask for attention. I think you have to be afraid that they'll get more and more bitter, and drift away from you, because you keep huddling up smaller and smaller and getting things wrong and insisting that people who love you are all wrong for loving someone so worthless."

And he unlocked the door and walked away.

Harry shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak.

He couldn't do anything but stand there and feel the paralyzing fear that Malfoy was right.


	15. An Interview

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Fifteen—An Interview_

It took a long time for Harry to recover.

Longer than it should have, he knew, his eyes closed as he mopped at the flush on his cheeks. There might have been some tears there, too, but he was going to keep any notion of _those _far away from his mind. Malfoy might be able to use Legilimency and learn that Harry thought he had wept.

Harry wouldn't have thought that Malfoy would use Legilimency against him, an hour ago. But that had been before he'd said…what he said.

Harry swallowed and pushed himself slowly off the wall with one arm. His head was whirling. He knew that he had ignored Lily's misbehavior for a long time, but on the other hand, it seemed like no one else was punishing her, either. Maybe he was too sensitive. If Ginny and the other Weasleys saw nothing wrong with what Lily was saying, why shouldn't he let it go?

Only what she'd quoted Ginny as saying had pushed him to act. Harry thought that was excusable.

But now he had to worry about more things being wrong than ever, if he'd hurt people and disgusted them and was in danger of making them drift away from him, but not for the reasons he'd thought.

Harry laughed through a throat that still felt suspiciously full of tears. Malfoy might have intended to give him a clearer picture of himself, but in reality, he'd given Harry more things to worry about. Harry wondered if he should go and tell him that. He thought Malfoy was in the kitchen and not his bedroom.

But the moment the thought came to him, Harry had to shake his head. No, he wouldn't give Malfoy the chance to laugh at him, or kick him again. He had to get some _independent _confirmation of what Malfoy had said, instead. Something that would tell him how close to the truth Malfoy had actually come.

So he turned around, and tossed some Floo powder into his fireplace, and spoke the name of the one place he felt reasonably sure he would find someone home at this time of day. "The Burrow."

Then he had to pause to pick the powder up from the carpet, and remove the wards and charms that Malfoy had put on the fireplace. It was a good thing that Malfoy hadn't said people were willing to forsake him because he was clumsy and forgetful, or _that _might well have served him as independent confirmation.

* * *

"What can I do for you, Harry?"

Harry lowered the steaming cup of tea to the table in front of him and sighed. Molly had welcomed him and fussed over him and seated him in the kitchen with enough tea and biscuits to feed an army, but it seemed she had known he'd come over for more reasons than just to visit. She sat opposite him now, her hands still. Harry couldn't recall ever seeing her that way when he was in school.

Well, it was true that she'd had four or five children still at home for most of that time, and while she could be busy enough when her grandchildren were at the house, there was no reason for her to be when they weren't. And more by luck than anything else, Harry had chosen a time when there were no grandchildren here. Not even Arthur was in the house; he was puttering with "something Muggle" back in the garden, Molly had said.

Harry subdued the impulse to pick up the tea again, recognizing that he was trying to run away from this conversation with Molly the same way that he'd run away so fast from all the ones with Malfoy. "Molly," he said. "Do you think that I need to do something about Lily?"

Molly stared at him. Harry winced. So Malfoy had been wrong after all, and Harry now sounded like a child abuser.

"Why, what's she done?" Molly asked, and sipped from her own tea. "I know that she made quite a display at her birthday party, but I thought that was down to the divorce. I expect that she'll get over that eventually."

Harry grimaced and looked at his hands. He hadn't thought this out, as usual. If he told Molly the truth, then he was dragging her into the divorce, and forcing her to choose sides. He and Ginny had both tried to keep from doing that, so far.

But there were some things he could tell her that were true.

"She keeps swearing at me," he said. "She told me that she wanted me and Ginny to get back together, and when I said that I didn't think that would be happening, she yelled at me. Slammed into her room and refused to come out the rest of the evening." He swallowed again. "This morning, when I woke up and came out of my room, she said I looked like I'd had a shag."

Molly's mouth fell open. Then she shook her head and said, "I can't remember any of our children talking that way."

Harry kept a cautious eye on her as he sipped his tea and nibbled a biscuit again. "So it's down to our parenting?" he asked. "Do you have any advice?"

"They never talked like that, because I would have given them chores for a month," Molly said firmly. "Ginny told me that there were problems with Lily, occasionally, but she's never mentioned anything like that. How long has this been going on? Since the divorce, or earlier?" She had a determined set to her mouth.

"Maybe she doesn't talk like that in front of Ginny," Harry mumbled. It figured, he thought, it just _figured, _that he would turn out to be a miserable excuse for a parent, and Ginny the one who could handle Lily. "But she only _talks _like that since the divorce. She was throwing tantrums like that before it, though."

Molly shook her head. "I really don't understand," she said softly. "I never saw her being spoiled. She was never spoiled _here_." Then she seemed to draw herself up, and looked at Harry keenly. "But you must see that it's unacceptable for her to act like that. Why, she goes to Hogwarts in a year! She won't last a day if she speaks to her professors the way she speaks to you."

Harry winced again and decided that he might as well lay out the problem clearly and bluntly. Maybe Molly could help him better that way. "I think—I think that it's only me. That I'm doing something that's wrong. Maybe she would be fine with her professors. She seems fine with her mum. Can you give me any advice?"

"Yes," Molly said unexpectedly. Harry tried to sit up and pay attention. "Stop flinching."

"What?" Harry's mouth fell open.

"Stop acting as though you're going to do something wrong with every step you take." Molly put down her cup again and pointed at him. "Arthur was like that when Bill was two and Charlie was born, you know. Walking on eggshells because he was afraid that Bill was upset about the new baby and jealous, and that he would do something that made him more upset. And afraid that he would hurt Charlie. Charlie was a more delicate baby than Bill," Molly added, her eyes distant and gentle. "Arthur was sure that every time Charlie cried when he held him, it meant Charlie was upset with _him_. Not that he was hungry, or needed a new nappy, or was tired, or just was crying to cry, the way babies do sometimes."

"But everything I do with Lily _does _seem wrong," Harry had to argue. Didn't Molly understand that? Why would Harry have come to her, otherwise? "I get her the wrong presents, and I don't listen to her, and I don't focus on her enough even when I'm with her, and I don't inspire respect in her."

Molly clucked her tongue. "I won't deny that you've done some things wrong, Harry. I just told you that, didn't I? But Lily's not a newborn anymore, either. A ten-year-old isn't an adult, but she's capable of learning _some _things and taking _some _responsibility for her actions. You do need to discipline her when she speaks to you as if she were your equal, or you'll never get anything but that disrespect from her."

"I don't know _how_."

"To stop flinching would be a good start," Molly said. "And the next time she says something like that, tell her to go to her room. Isn't that one way Ginny usually punishes her? I know that she's told me that. Or take away something that she likes. Ginny used to take away flying privileges for a day."

"That would be—that would make her hate me _more_," Harry said.

Molly looked him in the eye. "You're too concerned that she hates you and it's never going to change," she said softly. "You know that children can grow up and think differently about their parents, Harry. I know Ron used to resent us a lot and feel lost among his brothers." She smiled a little. "He told me once that we had him sixth because we wanted to make his life miserable."

"He _did_?"

"He was thirteen," Molly said. "Unreasonable is pretty much the definition of thirteen." She leaned across the table. "But now look at him. He's the one who's closest to us, and the one who sees us the most, what with Charlie in Romania and George and Percy so busy and Bill and his family gone half the year to Egypt. You're having a difficult time with Lily. I know that. It doesn't mean that she's going to freeze into someone who hates you for the rest of her life."

Harry stared into his teacup. He supposed he _had _been thinking that, without meaning to. That every mistake he made would be permanent, and drive Lily away from him. That he would scar her irreparably with one careless word, and that meant it might be better not to utter any words to her at all.

_I thought I would abuse her._

Harry shut his eyes. It seemed that this was a day of shattering revelations. He could have done without the one that he was afraid he was going to turn into Uncle Vernon someday, though.

"Harry?" Molly's hand was on her wrist, her concerned voice next to his ear. "You just went all pale. Do you need to see Audrey?"

Harry forced his eyes open and took a deep breath. Audrey was Percy's wife, a Healer, and although she was the least intrusive Healer Harry had ever met, that wasn't saying much. "No, Molly, I'm fine," he said, and smiled at her. "Maybe fine for the first time in a long time."

Molly eyed him. "You might have some idea of how to get along with Lily?"

"And to discipline her," Harry said. "I think—I think I was always afraid that I wouldn't know how to do it because I was raised by people who were awful, you know? And I thought I would _have _to be awful. So I went too far the other way."

Molly narrowed her eyes. "I've thought that for a long time," she said slowly. "Those awful Muggles…But I didn't think you would ever think that, and I didn't want to say it. I know you don't like to talk about them. It's more than just our conversation, isn't it? Something's happening to change your mind. Someone woke you up." She looked far more interested than Harry would have thought she would. After all, her most likely assumption was that Harry had met someone to replace Ginny, and she could hardly approve of _that_. "Who was it?"

Harry swallowed. They would find out eventually, and he would prefer that they found out from him rather than from Lily. "Draco Malfoy. I saved his son's life, and he's trying to stay with me and give me my life back in return."

Molly blinked a few times. Then she sighed and said, "I want you to listen very carefully to what I'm going to say to you, Harry, and not react immediately."

Harry clasped his hands in front of him. Had she seen Lily in the last few days? Had Lily told her that she thought Harry was gay? Or Ginny might have mentioned it, Harry supposed. Perhaps she was going to say something about the feud between the Malfoys and the Weasleys?

"I wonder how good he is for you."

Well, that wasn't what he'd suspected, unless Molly was going to use that to get around to talking about the Malfoy-Weasley feud indirectly. Harry eyed her. "What do you mean?" he finally asked, because Molly was frowning, but she hadn't said anything else.

"I wonder if he can teach you how to discipline Lily, and get along with you." Molly spoke softly and slowly, considering each word before she said it, which Harry knew she didn't always do. This must have been important to her. Part of him relaxed as he realized that he was still enough in Molly's good graces for that, then, that she liked him enough to interest herself in what happened to him. "I wouldn't think that he raises his children the way you strive to raise yours."

Harry relaxed enough to snort a little. "Molly, he was the one who made me come here. I mean, not that he told me to, but that he was the one who inspired it. He told me that Lily was probably being hurt by the way I treated her and other people, instead of helped. It might even happen with more than her, he said. Maybe I was hurting my other children, too, and Ron and Hermione, and the rest of you. I think he's doing okay so far."

Molly's eyebrows crept up until they merged into her hair. "He might be a good influence on you, after all," she said. "But I have to question—Harry, I'm sorry, but I have to question what his interest is here. Why does he think repairing your life, rearranging your life, is good payment for his life-debt?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "He thinks that my life is so messy that I can't _live. _He promised to fix it. Maybe he's not always doing the best job. He—he hit me where it hurt today. But he's also fought with me, and he saved my life from a trap by some of my enemies. I saved his at the same time, so that didn't cancel the life-debt, unfortunately. But he's tried to make sure that I eat and sleep."

Molly shut her mouth with a snap on whatever she had been about to say, but her eyes danced, and a second later she shook her head and murmured, "It sounds like you have a new mother-in-law."

"I'm in no big hurry to get married again, believe me," Harry said.

He wondered a second later if he should have said that so quickly and eagerly, especially given the way Molly looked at him. Maybe _she _believed he was gay, too, and was just waiting for the time when he announced he was getting married to a man to say it. But Harry ducked his head and played with his teacup, and Molly chose to go on.

"If he's this good to you, then I have to admit, I don't mind," she said firmly. "I'd been pondering how to say that to you for a long time, and I feel like I can breathe to finally have it out in the open." She leaned forwards and studied Harry cautiously. "I hope that _you_ feel that way, too."

Harry smiled and patted her hand. "Yes. I would have—I would have reacted worse to it yesterday. Or just thought it meant I was an awful father and it was more confirmation that no matter what I did to try and change my relationship with Lily, I was doomed to mess it up."

"I don't think you're _inherently _an awful father," Molly said. "You've done some bad things, yes, but I already told you that I don't think they need to go on. But changing can be very hard." She looked at the center of the kitchen, her face soft. Harry wondered what she was thinking about, but reckoned it could be just about any of her children. Like she had said about Ron, all of their relationships had changed to her over the years.

"I'll do my best." Harry stood up to go, and paused to lean down and kiss her forehead. "Thanks, Molly. For being so good about…everything."

"You and Ginny are divorced, Harry, but that doesn't make you the enemy." Molly clasped his hands tightly. "Please never think that. You still have a family here if you want it, no matter if we disagree with you."

Harry hugged her and stepped back to the Floo connection. He felt as though he was surrounded by a hovering warmth, he thought, as though he'd cast a charm before he left home.

He hadn't realized how lonely he was. He'd been convinced that the Weasleys, minus Ron, were on Ginny's side, and the awkwardness around them and the reserved smiles they gave him at things like Lily's birthday party had just convinced him of that further. He _ought _to have remembered that they had other things to criticize that had nothing to do with the divorce. If Molly had wanted to talk to him about Lily but hadn't felt able to, that would explain some of the constrained behavior, too.

And now that he had had someone tell him, in less blunt and more loving terms, that he had done some things wrong but still had the potential to change…

He had a Malfoy to talk to.


	16. Another Interview

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Sixteen—Another Interview_

This time, Harry found Malfoy in the kitchen. He had yet another numbered list in his hand, and was comparing it with a different one, frowning. His head snapped up when Harry stepped into the room.

"You've come to confront me," he said. "But not with lightning, I hope, because you waited this long."

Harry paused, trying to decide how he felt about that. At least part of him must have found it acceptable, because he shook his head and walked over to sit down at the table. "I was talking with Molly Weasley, actually."

"She let you?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "I know you have no reason to like the Weasleys, but the rest of Ginny's family isn't always bad. And you know, my younger son is half Weasley. You seem to like him well enough."

Malfoy half-shrugged. "Someone who can see the value of Slytherin is already more sensible than the rest of them." But all the time, his eyes stayed on Harry, and he seemed to have forgotten his numbered lists entirely.

Harry took a deep breath. "Molly told me some of the same things, about how not disciplining Lily hurts her," he said. "She even seemed to think that Lily might be a complete spoiled brat by the time she goes to Hogwarts." He ignored Malfoy's mutter that contained the words "already that way." It wouldn't work if he got upset right now. "And she told me that sending her to her room and taking away her flying privileges might work. I want to know if you had any suggestions like that."

Malfoy straightened up a little. "You would trust _me _to suggest punishments?"

"I don't have any idea what ones are good, because I'm too afraid of hurting her." Harry shook his head a little, impatiently, when Malfoy just continued to stare at him in shock. "Even Molly said that. So I wondered if you could suggest something. If you can't, that's fine, but I thought I would ask."

Malfoy swallowed and looked at the floor. "I thought you would come and tell me to get out of your house and never bother you again," he said. "I scolded you pretty hard."

Harry had to laugh. "Less than perfectly confident in your actions? _You_?"

Malfoy lifted his head with a faint frown. "I know I'm not perfect. I've had that perspective rubbed in my face often enough, you know." He touched his check, then brought his hand down again, apparently because he had remembered that he was also forbidden to rub his eyes like a normal person. "And you've accused me of harsh actions towards your daughter already."

"I want what's best for Lily," Harry said. "My children are my first priority, I keep saying, but I haven't really showed them. I've just let them go along, and handle their discipline by themselves, and say some—pretty awful things." He looked at Malfoy, wondering if he would interrupt, but Malfoy stood and watched him with hooded eyes. "I have to _really _make my children my first priority. Take time off from work, and talk with Lily, and talk with James about these thefts he keeps committing, and talk with Al about _watching _his games, as a spectator, not standing there under my Invisibility Cloak."

"You have to do other things, too," Malfoy said, in a low, charged voice.

Harry nodded, distracted by all the visions whirling through his head. "I know. Talk with Ginny, and see if we can come to some agreement that she'll stop mentioning her suspicions about me being gay in front of our kids. Talk to Ron and Hermione and find out if I was driving them away from me, like you said."

Malfoy leaned forwards. "And you have to take care of yourself. Stop thinking of yourself as just a weapon, and a means to an end."

Harry blinked at him. "I think I'm doing pretty well at that. You were the one who told me that people are taking advantage of me as an Auror. I won't be their excuse and their escape anymore."

"You already suspected that," Malfoy said. "I put it into more open terms than you would, that's all." He leaned still nearer, again. One more step and he would be looming over Harry. "You have to _value _yourself enough to make the change, or you'll turn from an Auror who spares your colleagues work into an overprotective father."

"So what do you suggest I do?" Harry asked, holding onto his temper as best as he could. He'd thought he was doing pretty well, and here was Malfoy, dumping another set of impossible standards on him to live up to. "Abandoning my children and going along my merry way is _not _an option."

"Nor was I going to suggest it be." Malfoy's voice was very quiet now. "I do have some concrete plans, if you'd like to hear them."

Harry drummed one fist on his knee. It was stupid, but he didn't think he could walk away from Malfoy now, after having let him come so far to say what he had to say, and he also didn't want to strike out at Malfoy.

"Sure," he said finally, and knew that Malfoy would be able to hear the sound of gritted teeth in his voice.

Malfoy raised his eyebrows, but said nothing else, mercifully, instead merely reaching out and tapping one of the lists lying on the table. Harry waved his wand to Summon it and laid it down in front of it.

_Make a strict schedule of eating and sleeping times. Use alarm charms, if necessary, to remind one when to eat, and use Sleeping Spells if one cannot get to sleep on time._

_Talk to one's wife and arrange a schedule for who keeps the daughter and when. If there is an emergency, then one of the parents may ask the other to take her, for as long as it takes to resolve the emergency. Deadlines at work and the daughter nagging her current guardian do not count as an emergency._

Harry looked up. "Is there a reason that you keep referring to me as 'one' instead of 'you' or something?" he asked.

"I thought it best to be formal after my last outburst."

Harry stared at Malfoy. That was about the last response he would have expected to hear. He did notice that Malfoy was avoiding his eyes, and a little understanding bloomed in him.

_He's embarrassed about having lost control like that. Even if he told me the truth. Even if he does think that it was the best thing he could have done, and the only way that he was going to get through to me._

Harry swallowed, and blinked, and returned to his list. At least he understood a little more about Malfoy than he had two minutes ago.

_Talk to one's friends. Make them aware of the problems. Apologize if necessary. Do _not _take on extra commitments as a form of apology, or make them privy to everything that crosses one's mind merely because one feels guilty._

_Make it clear to the Head Auror that one needs either another wrist-bell or extra help on the case of the Spiders. Expecting them to rely on one's help and luck alone is clearly ridiculous._

Harry looked up. "There were other Aurors assigned to work the case with me, you know," he said mildly. "They were there on the day that we discovered the powder was probably from a Dark artifact, or a Dark artifact itself, and turned it over to the Unspeakables. And they did most of the work with trying to identify the body in Madam Malkin's."

"Have you heard from any of them since?" Malfoy's eyes glittered. "Even when you brought those Spiders into the Ministry?"

Harry blinked. "There's hardly been time for that to happen," he complained. "I was locked away with the Head Auror for hours, and then I came back here with you." _To have the shock of my life. _At least he could hope it would be a salutary shock.

Malfoy leaned delicately against the wall; somehow, Harry found it hard to apply the word "slouching" to him, even though he wouldn't have hesitated if it was Ron. "Allow me to rephrase, then. Did the Head Auror talk about anyone else handling the case with you, including any of those who were with you when you found the body and the powder?"

"I didn't find the body personally," Harry began, and continued when Malfoy got a little dangerous look in his eyes. "No, he didn't mention it. But I'm sure they're still working the case. That trap in Knockturn Alley was just that, a trap. They weren't called to it because the Spiders only wanted me, for some reason."

"Then he could have told you about it, and told you who would handle which responsibilities." Malfoy gave him a little smile that made Harry breathless with how nasty it was. "Isn't that how Aurors usually work? They subdivide a case, and work in partnerships to keep themselves safe, but they don't all do the same thing?"

Harry put a hand to his forehead. "Sure. I'm just—trying to remember the last time I worked a case all the way through to the end with anyone but Ron." And he had to admit, he'd done a lot himself, at least with paperwork aspects and doing some routine sort of work to cover for someone who wanted to go home.

"They're not lazy," he said, looking up at Malfoy. "I may have been letting them take advantage of me, but they're not lazy. They just need a holiday sometimes. They're human."

"The retort is too obvious," Malfoy said, and made a big show of closing his mouth.

"Fine," Harry said, with a sigh. "I know I'm human, too. It's just…I've always had more magical power than a lot of people. And I have more energy and time, too."

"Time that I believe _you told me _took away from your marriage and was probably one of the major causes of your divorce," Malfoy said. "Not to mention not knowing your children well. Perhaps the other Aurors are not all lazy. Perhaps Robards is a good Head Auror. But they haven't acted well by _you_."

"So you do think I ought to quit?" Harry heard his voice trembling, and looked down at the list. "No, wait. You said take a holiday."

"Yes," said Malfoy, and his voice was simmering, but he had stood up again and had gone back to not looming over Harry, which Harry appreciated. "You _can _learn. You need not sacrifice your career. I wouldn't want you to, and I don't think your children would want you to, either, bar your daughter. But you need to make changes. If the Spiders case is dangerous, the Head Auror should give you help, not expect you to find them and ask them if they're still helping you. If the Unspeakables find the powder and your wrist-bell too difficult to deal with, then you shouldn't go out on the case until they have answers for you. Going alone into danger is foolish."

Harry raised one hand and tapped it against his right ear, cocking his head to the side as he did.

"What are you doing?" Of all the things he had done and said, this was the one that made Malfoy look at him as if he was mad.

"I'm trying to get all the wool out that apparently prevented me from saying that to myself," Harry said dryly. "How come it makes so much sense when _you_ say it, but I never thought of it before?"

Malfoy arched his eyebrows. "Because an outside perspective is what you needed. I told you the reasons that others might be happy to leave the situation as it was, because it gave them someone to blame. And if it did not, they were held back by what I suspect are your friends' scruples, that they did not want to tell an adult how to act, or by their age. Your children can hardly advise you to do what's best."

Harry sighed, his humor flickering and dying again. "Yes, I know. I really fucked up there."

"And you have spent too much time concentrating on that," Malfoy said. "It is the only thing in which I find your daughter sympathetic. You brood on the past and the gifts that you did not buy her, the moments you missed, instead of the gifts that you might still buy and the occasions you might spend with her. Concentrate on the future instead. And do something concrete and _now_."

"What?"

Malfoy half-rolled his eyes, but Harry didn't miss the smile he tried to hide. Good. Malfoy wanted to stay with Harry for the moment and help him wrestle his life into shape, if he could. "Contact your Head Auror and tell him that you're taking a holiday. Effective immediately, lasting at least until he tells you who else is working with you on this case. And then buy a gift for your daughter."

Harry bit his lip. "She might think it's trying to make up for the wrong broom I bought her for her birthday."

"She can freely reject it," Malfoy said. "But it shows that you were thinking of her." He paused. "Even if you weren't thinking of doing _that _until I brought it up. I think I'll leave it to you to choose the gift."

Harry thought about it. He wondered what receiving a special gift that was just for him would have meant to him when he was an unloved child stuck at the Dursleys'. Lily was far from stuck at the Dursleys'—he had to remember that, had to remember that her life hadn't been _all _awful—but she might still want to think he was noticing her, remembering she was there.

"That would make sense," he murmured. "And I'm not going to give her a broom. It would remind her too much of what I _didn't _get her, before." He saw Malfoy roll his eyes, but ignored that; if Malfoy was going to leave this decision up to Harry, then Harry was going to pick the gift, and he would think aloud while he did it, because it pleased him. "I'll give her a book."

Malfoy's head tilted. "Her Aunt Granger doesn't give her enough of those?"

"It has _Weasley _in front of it now, you know," Harry said primly, although he was absurdly pleased that Malfoy cared enough to have worked out what Hermione's relationship to Lily would be, now that she was married to Ron. "And no. She gave Jamie books. I think she thought Lily was too interested in doing other things."

"Perhaps the number of assumptions that people around you have made about your daughter is one contributing factor to her rage," Malfoy murmured.

Harry winced and nodded. "That did occur to me," he said. "But this book is a history of younger children and their contributions to the history of the wizarding world that I saw before. I was thinking about getting it for Jamie, but when I found out it was about younger children, I knew it wouldn't do."

"It might be an interesting idea," Malfoy said. Harry couldn't figure out whether that was a neutral way of saying it would be a terrible one, and decided not to try. It was still up to him, as Malfoy had pointed out. "Now what?"

"Now I contact Robards," Harry said, standing up, "and tell him about that holiday."

* * *

"This is unacceptable, Auror Potter."

"I know the notice is short," Harry said with dignity. He could feel Malfoy silently watching behind him. He had offered to leave the room when Harry opened the Floo connection, but Harry had asked him to stay. He had no reason to hide anything from him now, and part of him wanted Malfoy to see that Harry was _trying _his suggestions.

Even though, looking at the fury that twisted Robards's face, Harry was starting to suspect that this was the one that wouldn't work.

"It's not that," Robards said, in a low snarl. "You are in the middle of an _ongoing case, _one that became more urgent with the capture of some of the criminals _this very day. _Or did you forget that, in the way you rushed away with your paramour?"

Harry's brain jerked to a halt. His mouth flapped open as he stared at Robards, trying to remember what that word meant.

"Excuse me," he said. "You saw me leaving with someone you think is my lover?" His voice was weak, and he heard Malfoy shift behind him in a way that he thought meant he was going to say something, but he didn't. Or else Harry couldn't hear him over the near-constant roaring in his ears.

"Who else could Malfoy be? Why would you keep him with you otherwise?" Robards shook his head back and forth. "I'd heard rumors you were gay before, with the divorce from your wife and your closeness with Weasley, but I could ignore it. It had no bearing on whether you were a good Auror. This does. You can't take a holiday because you want to spend time with family, you can't take it to spend time with a lover."

Harry was tempted to back up and stand, breaking off the Floo connection. He might as well. There was nothing else he could do here.

But he recognized the impulse coiling in his muscles. It was the same one that had made him go for food and drinks in the pub rather than staying and talking to Malfoy. The same one that had made him walk away from or bury so many arguments with Ginny. It was just easier to get along if he ran away until the other person forgot about this.

_No_.

"I don't think so," he said, and didn't understand the depth of his voice until he saw Robards freeze. "Other Aurors take time to spend with family. With lovers. You tolerated that bloody stupid affair between Aurors Pevara and Tozain that ended up splitting the Department, remember? And that was adultery. But I forgot. They're not Harry Potter, are they? They're just _ordinary _Aurors. Even when they were in the middle of ongoing cases, they could be excused.

"This is the end of letting myself be walked on, Auror Robards." Harry heard his voice from a distance, while the center of his chest felt hollow, and at the same time filled with a pounding chaos. "Either I can quit now, or you can let me have my holiday."

Robards said nothing.

Harry bowed his head. "Then I'll send you my resignation letter in the morning," he said, and backed away from the Floo connection.

He was shaking as he stood. He hadn't wanted it to come to this. He thought it was stupid that it had. Surely Robards could recognize that he deserved some time off like everyone else, especially when he had done the most on this case so far and was the target of the Spiders' trap? But he supposed Malfoy would say that Robards was one of those who had come to rely on using him as they liked.

_Malfoy…_

Harry turned around.

Malfoy watched him for a long moment. Then he clasped his fist to his heart and bowed.

"Well done," he said softly, as he came up.

There was no reason for that to make Harry feel like he could fly, but it did.


	17. Aftermath

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seventeen—Aftermath_

"You didn't expect him to sack you."

"No shit," Harry said. He was looking around his room, wondering for a second what he would do now. He had almost no ordinary clothes aside from his Auror robes. He shook his head, wondering when _that _had happened. And why it hadn't ended up on Malfoy's list yet.

"Language," said Malfoy, his voice so weak that Harry turned to look at him.

Malfoy was standing near the doorway of Harry's bedroom, and he wasn't giving Harry's bed or bare walls the disgusted looks that Harry had expected. Instead, he stood with his arms folded over his belly as though _he _was the one who had taken an unexpected blow. Harry sighed. Now he had to deal with this, when what he really wanted was to get to Ron. He was the one who deserved to hear the news first.

"What?" Harry asked.

"A life-debt, settling a life-debt," Malfoy said, in a slow and stumbling voice Harry hadn't thought he was capable of, "is supposed to _help _you. I may have just cost you your job, and you're not even getting upset at me."

Harry sighed and cast another longing look at the row of Auror robes hanging in the wardrobe. Then he decided that he was bloody well good enough at Transfiguration to change one of them into what he wanted, and snatched it from the hook. He cast a sharp spell at it, and the cloth writhed and twisted. In a few seconds, the scarlet color was brown. Harry nodded and slipped it on. It didn't matter. He hadn't tried to change the cut or anything, so the robes still fit him.

"Potter? Why aren't you upset?"

"I think I'll be upset eventually," Harry said, turning around and staring at Malfoy. He reckoned that he couldn't put off talking to him forever. "But, at the moment, there are _other _things to worry about. And you didn't cost me my job. That was Robards. Bloody idiot," he added, frowning at the far wall. "I didn't think he'd do _that_. He's never cared about who Aurors sleep with before, and he's never told anyone that they can't have time off to spend with their families. What the fuck is going _on_ with him?"

This time, Malfoy didn't bother scolding him for language. He just continued watching Harry with big, absurdly frightened eyes, and Harry sighed again and put a hand on his arm.

"Your honor or whatever else is tied up in life-debts is safe," he said quietly. "I could have done something other than resigning. I didn't. That was _my _choice. Neither you nor Robards precisely forced me into doing it, you know. It's a combination of my hot temper and the way he wouldn't yield. You didn't cause either of those."

Malfoy still seemed to be struggling with words. Harry raised an eyebrow, and waited. He was surprised that this was affecting Malfoy so harshly. He'd seemed perfectly happy before ordering Harry around, and telling him what to do, and affecting his life in ways that could be seen as negative. Why this flinching?

"I did something like this once before," Malfoy finally whispered.

Harry controlled the impulse to say, "You go around getting Aurors sacked often?" He didn't think it would fit the mood.

And whatever this was, it was important to Malfoy, as small as it undoubtedly was. Harry waited instead, eyes locked on Malfoy, and Malfoy licked his lips and bowed his head a little, as he struggled through to his own sort of understanding.

"I did something that involved honor," Malfoy whispered. "Only I didn't understand it the way the—the other person did, and she blamed me for costing her _her _honor. She never forgave me. She never will."

"That would be Astoria?" Harry asked, fascinated despite himself. All the reasons he had imagined for why Malfoy's wife might have left him, and they had never involved anything like this. He had thought it was because Malfoy was a git, or Astoria was one, or they disagreed about the right way to teach Scorpius to march down the stairs in the morning.

Malfoy jerked back from him and stood as straight as an Auror trainee, clasping his hands behind his back. "It was my wife," he said. "But I must ask you to refrain from repeating that."

Harry rolled his eyes. "My friends aren't interested in pure-blood gossip anyway, and the only one of my children who needs to know the truth probably already does. Your secret's safe with me, Malfoy."

Malfoy only looked at him again. Harry didn't know what he was thinking _this _time. That Harry was untrustworthy. That everyone was interested in pure-blood gossip, because he was. That Harry's friends would always hate him.

It didn't matter. What did was telling Ron the truth. Harry let his hand clasp Malfoy's shoulder one more time, and then he turned around and began to move towards the door. He felt like Apparating rather than Flooing, though, really, there was no way that someone wouldn't find out what had happened to his job and start spreading it around in a number of hours. Robards had probably raged to himself, and when that happened, it wouldn't be quiet.

"Come on," he said, without looking back. "Let's go."

He thought there might be nothing, but at last there came the quiet slap of footsteps following him. Harry smiled, but kept his eyes straight ahead. There was every chance that Malfoy would misunderstand that smile if he saw it.

* * *

"What is Malfoy doing with you?"

Harry restrained himself from rolling his eyes, but it was hard. That wouldn't help to change Malfoy's impression that he was centrally important to everyone and that Ron and Hermione would always hate him.

"He's staying with me to pay off a life-debt that he owes me because I saved his son," Harry said simply, and sat on his desk, ignoring the paperwork. Right now, it wasn't his problem. "But I have something more important to talk to you about, Ron."

"More important than Malfoy being in our office?" Ron was on his feet, the cup of coffee that he'd been drinking standing forgotten on his desk, and his hand had edged nearer to his wand. "I think he's enchanted you somehow, mate. There's no way that you would be so calm about this otherwise."

"How entertaining, Potter," Malfoy said, in an absolute monotone that made Harry want to laugh in spite of the effect it was having on Ron. "Your superiors think that I'm your lover, and your equals blame me for enchanting you. Do not introduce me to your trainees. I don't think I would be entertained by _those _speculations."

Harry looked over his shoulder, carefully. Malfoy had the same shut face and narrow eyes that he'd had most of the time since he started talking to Harry. Harry could relax a bit. Yes, it was fine. At least, Malfoy wasn't in any worse of a mood than he'd been for a while now.

"Your lover?" Ron did have his wand out now. Harry looked back at him and shook his head. Ron didn't pay much attention. "This is changing too fast for me, mate. You couldn't have _told _me about this?"

Harry sighed, long and loudly enough that Ron looked at him. "Listen," Harry said, speaking loudly, too. He didn't care if someone passing overheard this. He needed Ron not to be mistaken more than he needed freedom from Ministry gossip, which he probably wouldn't get anyway. "Malfoy is not my lover. He is staying with me to help pay off a life-debt. He's saved my life a few times, too. On his advice, I told Robards that I needed a holiday from work because I need to work on getting my relationship to my kids right. Robards told me that I couldn't do that, not in the middle of an ongoing case. Then he blamed Malfoy for it. Apparently everyone else can have a family and a lover, but not me. So I told him I was resigning."

Ron shut his mouth and lowered his wand. He looked from Malfoy to Harry with such piercing eyes that Harry squirmed a little. He really _had _been distant from his friends, if he'd forgotten the way that Ron used to look at him. When was the last time he had undergone a searching look like that? When was the last time that he had cared enough about anything other than the case or the crisis right in front of him to ask for it?

He had probably just avoided another trap, he thought. If he had focused too much on Malfoy or Lily or any other one person once he quit, then he would have missed this, too.

"You're kidding," Ron said at last, slowly. "But the look on your face says you're not. And you were never a very good liar. What—Harry, this is _crazy_. What are you going to _do_?"

"Find another job," Harry said. "Eventually. Or maybe Robards will see sense and hire me back. It's not that I don't want to be an Auror, Ron. It's that my family is more important. I've been _saying _that for years. It's time that I finally started doing something about it."

"I can agree on _that_." Ron propped his fist on his chin and eyed Harry. "You'd say something about that, and then go home, and the next time I heard from Ginny, she was complaining about how you ignored her."

Harry winced. Then he stood up and accepted it. Well, maybe Ginny had said that. She'd also said lots of other things, most of them hurtful. And Harry had lived with it, or got over it. They were divorced now. She couldn't hurt him as much anymore.

It did make him realize, though, how much of the family had really just been his kids. They were the ones he wanted to see and talk to and do things with. Ginny had been someone to avoid and argue with and be "adult" with, which seemed to mean talking about problems that degenerated into more arguments.

_There's a reason we got divorced._

Lots of them, but this one was the first that gave Harry some pain and yet reason to move on, too. "I know," he said. "But maybe quitting for a while would be a good thing. I do want to find out who the Spiders are and what they're doing, why they would want to murder someone who works in Madam Malkin's and then set up a trap for me."

"We don't know that that body was someone who worked in Madam Malkin's," Ron promptly interrupted to remind him. "We haven't been able to identify enough of the remains for us to be sure of _anything _about them, really." Then he blinked, and his eyes focused on Harry. "Wait, what?"

So Harry had to explain the trap the Spiders had set, and how Malfoy had saved him from that. He watched Malfoy out of the corner of his eye as he did, wary about embarrassing him, but Malfoy seemed to feel differently about that when it came to Ron. He stood taller and let his arms fall down by his sides instead of folding them, while he gave Ron a smile that was almost lipless.

Harry wanted to roll his eyes, but didn't. Still, it reminded him of some of the stupid things he and Ginny had done to spite each other. He grinned a little as he wondered if Malfoy was gay after all, and had always really been focused on Ron. It wouldn't be like he could admit he was attracted to a Weasley even if he was. Blood traitors and all that.

_I hope not, though. It would just make everything too complicated._

Ron was clutching the edge of his desk by the time Harry finished the story. "Your wrist-bell _still _doesn't work, and Robards wanted you to go on working?" he breathed.

Harry nodded. "And I don't know if any other Aurors are still working on the case with me, or not. Robards obviously didn't tell you anything about this."

"No." Ron stared at the floor for a second, and then he put his wand on his desk and walked forwards. Harry shifted a little. He didn't know what Ron was going to do, but he would get in between him and Malfoy if it involved beating Malfoy up.

Instead, Ron wrapped his arms around Harry and hugged him, hard.

From the corner of his eye, Harry could see that Malfoy's face had gone more exquisitely neutral than ever. He bit his lip hard and leaned on Ron's chest, closing his eyes. Ron rattled and rocked him back and forth for a second, and then stepped back and searched his face.

"Don't do that to me again," Ron whispered.

"Do _what_?" Harry had to admit that he didn't like being manhandled when he had done nothing wrong. Between the Spiders' attempts and Malfoy dragging him around in the Ministry earlier and pinning him against the wall and now this, he thought he'd had his share of it for the day.

"Leave like that again." Ron clenched his hands in front of him. "You've been working on so many cases and trying to do so many things, I felt you were leaving me behind. But you were doing it so well that I thought it was what you _wanted_. Hermione was sure that you would come back to us. But I wasn't so sure."

Harry just nodded, eyes on Ron, and waiting for the punchline—which he didn't think would be an actual punch.

"Now you're back," Ron said. "You came and told me this instead of being so busy that I had to find out some other way. And you're doing something _new _with your life." The glance he flicked at Malfoy said that he wasn't sure about the worth of that new thing, but he would let it go for now. "And you can survive Lily. I know you can."

Harry relaxed and grinned. "That's the hardest thing I'll have to do, I think." He eyed Ron carefully. "And you're all right with me not being your partner anymore? Not right now, at least?" He had no idea if Robards would let him have his job back even if Harry asked for it.

Ron made a sharp little motion with one hand. "Will you stop _worrying _about that? Or let me worry about it, at least, instead of being so concerned?" He finally let Harry go and went back to his desk to pick up his wand. "You've done what I've wanted for a long time, Harry. Finally, some _acknowledgment_."

Harry flushed. He should have reckoned that would be the hardest thing for Ron and Hermione to bear, if he just stopped talking to them.

"I can handle it." Ron grinned at him. "And there's nothing to say that you can't tell me things about the Spiders on the sly, as it were."

Harry put out a hand and gripped Ron's. Ron returned the grip hard enough to leave little markings on his palm and the back of his hand. Harry took a deep breath, nodded once to Ron, and turned to Malfoy.

Malfoy's face wasn't emotionally neutral anymore. His mouth was locked in a slit, and his eyes were on the floor.

Harry stared at him. Then he thought he knew what was wrong, and nodded. After all, Malfoy didn't have as much experience of friendship as Harry did. Crabbe was dead, and Harry had heard, in the unconnected way that he heard about all the Hogwarts people he still knew, that Malfoy hadn't associated much with other pure-bloods after he divorced Astoria. So he was probably lonely, and here was Harry throwing the fact that he still had friendship into Malfoy's face.

"Come on," Harry told Malfoy, as gently as he could. "Let's go back home. I think we've done enough for one day." It was hard for him to remember that his day had begun in the pub that morning, capturing the Spiders who had come in and tried to destroy everything.

Malfoy lifted his head. His mouth relaxed as Harry watched, and his eyes became smooth and cold once again. "Yes," he said. "That would be best."

He gave a little nod to Ron, which Harry supposed was the best he could be expected to do under the circumstances, and then marched away from Harry in the direction of the door. Harry glanced over his shoulder and shrugged at Ron. He wouldn't pretend to understand Malfoy, and as long as he didn't menace anyone else, Harry thought that was okay.

Ron, for some reason, was grinning hard enough that he looked as though his cheeks hurt, and shaking with little restrained chuckles. He waved his hand at Harry to go on when Harry stared at him, and his face got red. Harry shrugged again and followed Malfoy. Maybe Ron just thought it was funny to see Malfoy longing for friendship and Harry wanting to do something about it.

But, Ron notwithstanding, Harry still thought that Malfoy was lonely, and it seemed to him that he _should _be the one to do something about that, since Malfoy was giving up so much to help _him_.

_I could be his friend, _Harry thought, glancing sideways at Malfoy as they walked down the center of the corridor, Malfoy's steps swift and quick, more silent than Harry's, as if _he _was the one who had received Auror training._ That might not make up for whatever happened with his wife, but I think it would help him._

Harry nodded. He didn't have a job anymore, after all. He would have plenty of time.


	18. Standing Tall

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eighteen—Standing Tall_

"What do _you_ like to eat?"

Apparently he had done something he wasn't allowed to again, because Malfoy stared at him as if he was the strange one. Harry shrugged. "I just thought that we seem to get ambushed when we go out to eat, and you've been making meals for me so far."

"Having house-elves make them isn't the same thing." Malfoy was still staring. Harry turned his back to walk into the kitchen. It was getting unnerving.

"And I might not be able to cook what you want, but at least I could have my house-elf make it and spare you the labor," Harry said over his shoulder. "Sometimes I can cook. It really depends." The early lessons at the Dursleys' house hadn't paid off as much as Harry had sometimes hoped, but then again, it wasn't like the greasy food Dudley loved then was in high demand in the wizarding world.

"You're strange." Malfoy said that as though it being softer would make it more true.

Harry turned and leaned against the table. He thought about folding his arms, but that might put Malfoy off, and Harry honestly didn't want to put him off. He just didn't understand him right now. "Why? Because I want to repay the favors someone keeps doing me? Someone who doesn't have to, the first person in years to worry about me sleeping and eating and—other things I should have been doing myself? What's strange about that?"

Malfoy's face had a tight cast to it. He looked around the kitchen as though he might find the answer in the wallpaper before he faced Harry again. "Because this is a life-debt that I'm paying back," he said. "I'm _supposed _to do things for you, to take care of you for a little while as we agreed, or I can't shed the debt. If it's mutual, it might be a lot of things, but it's not satisfaction of the debt."

"Oh." Harry chewed the side of his lip. It made sense. It was just— "I didn't think about that."

"Surely other people must have owed you life-debts." Malfoy padded over to the table and sat down. "How did you handle them?"

"Ron owed me some, but he saved my life in Auror work," Harry said, thinking back. "So did some of the other Aurors. It was the natural way for them to pay it back. And I suppose I owe a life-debt to your mother, but she never wanted to collect on it. Or maybe she decided that testifying at your trial was enough." He looked at Malfoy. "How does that one work into the mess of them that we have around us? Wouldn't it have been enough to cancel out the debt you think Scorpius owes me? Because I already owed something to your family, I was just paying it back?"

Malfoy shook his head hard enough that Harry thought he'd make himself sick. "No. It doesn't work like that. A debt can only be paid back, or sustained, between the same pair of people, unless one of them takes on another's, the way I did with Scorpius's. My mother would have had to give her debt to Scorpius for your catching him to matter that way."

"Then it doesn't reflect on what's between us." Harry shrugged and turned to face the kitchen cabinets again. "You never did tell me what you wanted to eat."

"I don't want anything to eat!" Malfoy had shot to his feet, Harry could see from the corner of his eye. "How can you _do _this? You went through battle today, near-starvation, and an emotional confrontation that I _forced _on you, followed by two more, but you still want to—to wait on me!"

Harry turned around and grinned a little. It wasn't as good as actually feeding Malfoy, but maybe he could turn the tables. "You're not used to someone caring for you," he said. "You don't count the house-elves. You're divorced. Your parents no longer live with you. And Scorpius needs your help, not the other way around. So you're not used to someone who likes you and looks to your needs."

Malfoy stared at him, so neutral now that he could have vanished into a shadow if Harry wasn't looking right at him. He said nothing, and Harry finally realized that he wouldn't, and it was up to Harry to continue.

"I don't think this has much to do with the life-debt," Harry said simply. "I think you're like this all the time. You got used to it, just the way I did, only I was more extreme. And now I've noticed, and I'd like to help you."

"This is your sacrificial martyr complex again, isn't it, Potter?" Malfoy sounded as if he hissed the words, but he couldn't. Harry took some pleasure in knowing he was the only Parselmouth alive in Britain right now. "You intend to prolong the debt and the period of service by lying down at my feet the way you do for everyone _else _around you."

Harry shook his head. "Believe it or not, I _like _to help people," he said. "It's why I made all those stupid bargains with my colleagues about taking over their cases, sure. But it makes me feel good to know that I helped them. That's my selfishness, if you like. The feeling of pleasure I get from it."

"What they feel doesn't matter?" Malfoy looked down at his hands as if realizing for the first time that they were white, the knuckles straining against his skin, and tucked them behind his back.

"Of course it does," Harry said, tolerant. "But not so much that I give up helping them. If you don't want me to, you can ask me not to, and I won't. But so far, all the reasons you've given me are based on the life-debt, or anger because you think that I'm lying down for you to trample all over. Do you not _want _someone caring for you? Say the word."

Malfoy closed his eyes and bowed his head. He looked tired, but even as Harry watched him, confused and concerned, he snapped himself back to straight-up, stern formation, his eyes fixed on Harry's as though he thought Harry would sneak around behind him and hit him on the head to get him to relax. "I don't want someone caring for me."

Harry blinked. "Oh," he said, and felt the bottom of his stomach drop out. No, he hadn't expected that, and he wanted to reach out and take Malfoy's hand and beg him to reconsider.

Instead, he turned away and said, "Kreacher will come in and provide dinner for us, then."

"That's fine," Malfoy said, cool-voiced and cool-faced. "You should take more advantage of your house-elf than you do, Potter. You have one who wants to help you, who is available to you, and who is older, which means that he'll have more experience in making diverse kinds of meals. You need not go out to eat at all if you don't wish to."

Harry couldn't bring himself to answer that. He only nodded and called Kreacher, who took one look at Malfoy and squealed, then set about preparing a meal. The food was stuffed birds of some kind that Harry had never had before, and seemed acceptable to Malfoy.

They ate in almost-silence, other than Malfoy sometimes telling Harry that he needed to contact Ginny tomorrow and explain what had changed. Malfoy's idea was that Harry should keep Lily this weekend, because he had already said he would, but now they needed to establish a normal schedule. Ginny, he seemed to think, would always be firecalling Harry and demanding that Lily be allowed to visit, now that he didn't have a job.

Harry only closed his eyes as the words splashed around him, and nodded when Malfoy expected some answer from him. Malfoy finally pushed his chair back with a screech of its legs on the kitchen floor, and made a muffled noise under her breath.

"Anyone would think that it was my own life I was fighting for so hard, Potter, and not yours."

"It's your life-debt," Harry said blandly, taking another bite of the meat in front of him. Malfoy had insisted that he have an extra serving of the meal Kreacher had made. He said it would keep them out of embarrassing situations, like Harry collapsing during his firecall with Ginny the next day. "I think that's enough to explain your investment in the situation."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "If you had let me pay it back some other way—"

"There was nothing you had that I wanted," Harry interrupted. "And now you've made it clear that you don't even want my friendship, or me to ask you _ordinary _things. I'll accept what you're giving me now because we already made the bargain. But if I had known it would turn out like this, I would have negotiated for something else."

Malfoy's jaw sagged a little, but he recovered. "You do blame me for the loss of your job, then."

"Not that, you idiot." Harry flung the fork back in the middle of his plate, and didn't care about the way Malfoy's eyes followed it. Harry wasn't a pompous pure-blood, and didn't have to abide by the code of manners that Malfoy thought was necessary for them. "You won't allow me to be your friend, even though I thought I could. You're still insisting on this _silly _separation. And yeah, it's silly, because you can't expect me to believe that you care about the way Lily behaves towards me, and that you want to praise me, and at the same time expect me to behave that you don't give a fuck about me."

"I—care," Malfoy said. "But—"

"Then let me show you _I _care, too!" Harry slammed his hands on the edge of the table. "It's not about letting me be a martyr! It's about letting me be a _friend. _You so clearly need one. And you were the one who said that we were already involved in this huge tangled mess with life-debts and it was hard to say who owed who what now," he added, remembering, belatedly, what Malfoy had said that night in Knockturn Alley. "How do you know that letting me be nice to you would really keep you from fulfilling this one?"

Malfoy turned away from him so abruptly that Harry decided that was it, good night, the end, and he probably wouldn't see Malfoy until the next morning. But Malfoy's throat bobbed, and he turned back around. Perhaps he remembered that the debt caged him as well as Harry, and running away from it would do neither of them any good.

"I—it's hard," Malfoy said thickly. He was rubbing his hand across his throat and staring at his fingers as if they had an independent life of their own. "I've never let anyone be this for me before."

Harry blinked, trying to remember who Malfoy's friends from Hogwarts had been. Maybe Crabbe and Goyle couldn't help him much because they weren't his intellectual equals, and then there was the small problem of Crabbe being dead.

"No one?" he asked. "Not Parkinson, or Zabini?" He hesitated, then decided he had to bring it up, because it would be cowardly not to. "Not Greengrass?"

Malfoy kept his eyes shut, and let out a hard, long stream of breath that made the curtains flutter on the window next to the table. "No," he said. "No one. I trusted them, but—I knew the limits of our bargains. I married Astoria so that I would have children and someone to share my life with. She wanted wealth and someone to share her life with."

Harry could imagine worse motives for a marriage. He and Ginny hadn't thought about money or children that would exist only to continue a family bloodline, but they'd wanted a companion.

_And I wish it could have worked out, _he thought. Even if it had been poisoned for a much longer time than he knew, even if he and Ginny had been mistaken in each other, he would still have liked to be with her, in a world where the poison was less and he and Ginny knew each other better.

_But that's not this one, _Harry decided, and shook his shoulders a little. He should be focusing on Malfoy right now, not Ginny or himself. "No one's ever wanted to help you just to help you?" he asked.

Malfoy opened his eyes. They had darkened, but he stood in front of Harry calmly now, not running or scrambling. "No," he said, his voice clipped. "I have no objection to accepting it from you, however, now that you've convinced me you're different from most people."

Harry eyed him. That seemed—sudden. "Because of the life-debt?"

"This has little or nothing to do with the debt," Malfoy said. "It cannot. As you pointed out, we have too many of them between us. They influence us in a manner I've never seen before and would be reluctant to try and name, precisely _because _there are so many of them. I must admit no particular liking for this kind of influence. But it exists, and I will have to study it carefully, with the help of some books that are not here, before I understand it. Therefore I will not attribute my desire for your friendship to the debts until I have some measure of comprehension, whereas right now I have none."

Harry experienced a strong desire to throw the table at Malfoy. But that would create a mess that Kreacher would probably be assigned to clean up, so Harry just leaned on the table and snapped, "Talk English."

Malfoy blinked several times. "I was under the impression that I was."

"No," Harry said. "You're hiding everything under all those complicated _words. _You've decided to accept my help. Is that it? It won't stain your honor or your blood purity or whatever really matters to you?"

A faint flush crept up Malfoy's face, and he stood more haughtily than ever, gazing at Harry as if he would have liked to kick him. But this new—this _older—_Malfoy was too dignified to do that. He nodded. "You can help me."

"Good." Harry stepped forwards and grasped his arm. "Go take a shower."

"Ah, yes, the famous Potter subtlety," Malfoy said, and sniffed a little. "This is your way of saying that I stink and need to bathe myself."

"I think you need the relaxation more than anything else," Harry said, and shoved him a little in the direction of the bathroom. "I would suggest a hot bath, but I _know _you're too dignified and uptight for that."

Malfoy eyed him, seemed about to say something, and then settled for turning around. Harry smiled. _Good. _He hadn't been looking forward to a comment about the Manor and the undoubtedly superior quality of the baths there that would mean he'd have to say something teasing back, and the conversation might keep Malfoy from ever getting into the shower.

When he was sure that he'd heard the bathroom door shut and water actually running, he turned to clean up the table—only Kreacher had already done that. Harry sighed and leaned back, one hand rubbing his eyes. "Thanks, Kreacher," he said.

Kreacher bobbed his head anxiously. His eyes were fastened on Harry, and he looked as though he might bite through his lip, a gesture Harry had never seen on a house-elf before. "Yous is not sending Master Malfoy away?" he whispered.

"What?" Harry asked, then shook his head. "Well, no, but he'll be leaving for the weekend on Friday. I'm having Mistress Lily over, and I don't think they like each other."

"Kreacher is not meaning that." But Kreacher fidgeted back and forth, shaking his hands and wringing his fingers together, until Harry had to ask what he _did _mean.

But Kreacher still didn't answer for long seconds, just looked pensively towards the bathroom where Malfoy had gone, his fingers in his mouth. Harry sighed, then asked him again. "Kreacher, what is it about Malfoy that you want him to stay here?" It had to be that. Kreacher was acting like a house-elf on the verge of going against what his master wanted, and the only thing Harry had told him he wanted was for Malfoy to leave on Friday so that Harry could have time alone with Lily.

_Even if Malfoy would probably make the better housemate right now._

Harry winced a little under the flood of guilt he felt about that. He should _want _to be around his daughter.

But Malfoy would probably tell him that no parent wanted to be around their children all the time. What Harry should do was accept that he didn't really want to be around Lily, and learn how to change that.

"Kreacher is wanting Master Malfoy to be staying all the time!"

Harry blinked and came back to the present. It wasn't really an answer to the question he'd asked Kreacher, he thought, but Kreacher was distressed enough as it was. Harry nodded soothingly to him and made patting motions at his head. "It's okay," he said. "I'm not going to kick him out permanently. It's just for the weekend." _And any other time Lily comes over until Scorpius's birthday._

"Master Harry is being _promising_?" Kreacher looked up at him with wet eyes and a trembling mouth that made Harry acutely uncomfortable. For fuck's sake, he didn't know how anyone could abuse a house-elf. The mere sight of Kreacher being upset made him wince all over.

"I promise," Harry said.

Kreacher seized his hand and tried to slobber kisses on it, which made Harry have to take it back, which made Kreacher wail about how he was a bad elf, which made Harry have to soothe him, which made him take a moment to realize that the shower had shut off.

Malfoy came out in a robe he must have brought with him, a pale one that made his skin look even paler than usual, and his hair soft and tousled. He stared at Harry and shook his head, once. Harry had no idea what he'd done and simply raised his eyebrows, not standing up from his crouch over Kreacher.

"What is it?" Harry asked.

"Thanks for suggesting I take a shower," Malfoy murmured. "I do feel better. Good night." He turned into his own bedroom and shut the door.

By the time Harry looked around again, Kreacher was back at work cleaning up the kitchen, and humming contentedly. Harry frowned in bewilderment and went to take his own shower.

It was strange to think about Malfoy's hands on the soap—there was no sign that he'd used his own—and his feet in the same bathtub, and the same shampoo in his hair.

But Harry reckoned he could get used to it. He had got used to stranger things.


	19. Apologies in the Middle of the Night

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nineteen—Apologies in the Middle of the Night_

Once again, Harry wasn't destined to have a normal night.

The Floo connection flaring to life apparently didn't wake him, but Kreacher tugging and pulling on his arm and squeaking in agitation did. Harry sat up, wiping at his hair and his eyes and feeling wretched. At the moment, he actually missed his wrist-bell. He always knew within a few seconds of hearing it ring where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, and then he would get the ribbon printing out of it so he would know what to do, too.

"What is it?" he asked, already reaching for the brown robe that he'd worn to the Ministry that day. "Did Malfoy have a nightmare?"

"Master Draco is being fine." Kreacher hopped up and down on one foot and tugged on his ears. "But Master James is being in trouble! Madam Juniper is being on the Floo!"

Harry shot to his feet, dread kindling so fast in his stomach that it felt as if his whole body was on fire in seconds. "I see," he said, and his voice had dipped down into a low register that he almost never heard from himself. "Well. That changes things. Is she still there?"

Kreacher stopped hopping and nodded. He looked a little calmer now that Harry was in charge. Harry wondered for a second if he should tell Malfoy that, that taking on extra work was one way to make people shut up and do things instead of running around in circles.

But the thought of Malfoy reminded him of something else. He frowned at Kreacher. "Let Malfoy sleep, all right? He might think that he should wake up and come with me, but this isn't his concern. He was tired today."

Kreacher gave him a look Harry couldn't interpret, but he nodded. "Master Draco Malfoy is needing his sleep," he said, and it might be something he believed himself, rather than just the parody of his orders that Harry feared it was.

"Right," Harry said, and cast a quick Flattening Charm on his hair that he would pay for later. Then he ran out of his room and towards the Floo.

He knew that it wasn't just Jamie being in trouble, the way he had been over the theft of the mandrake, not if Madam Juniper was there. She was the mediwitch who had taken over from Poppy Pomfrey at Hogwarts most of the time now, although Madam Pomfrey was sometimes still in the infirmary. Harry had the feeling she didn't want to retire.

He hoped she was there now. He _hoped. _He trusted her experience more than the young Madam Juniper's, and if there was a case of needing to save Jamie's life, then he would take experience over supposedly up-to-date Healing magic every time.

He ran into the drawing room, and saw Madam Juniper smile at him fretfully. She had her hair pushed back from her ears, and it looked as though she, too, had been running her fingers through it. Harry nodded at her. "What happened?"

"Jamie fell off Gryffindor Tower," Madam Juniper began.

Harry closed his eyes, and felt as if _he _had fallen.

"He'll be all right!" Madam Juniper said hastily. "But we do have to regrow some bones, and he's in pain. I thought…I thought it would help him to have you there, since Poppy said that you'd had to take Skele-Gro at one time. Your experience could help him, and reassure him that he's going to be all right. He doesn't think he is."

"He's conscious?" Harry demanded, as he reached for the Floo powder on the mantle. "Talking?"

Juniper nodded. "But in a lot of pain, and the Skele-Gro is going to put him to sleep almost as soon as it's administered. He—well, he's refusing to take the potion right now. He says that it has ingredients in it that could harm him." Juniper shook her head. "I know that he's a Potions genius, but a Potions genius should know that Skele-Gro is a tried and proven potion, and nothing is wrong with the hospital wing's batch!"

Harry chose to ignore those last words instead of snapping at her for them, the way he would have liked to. He knew that Madam Juniper was fond of Jamie and upset right now. The way _he _was. "Thank you. Please take your head out of the fireplace. I'm coming through."

She retreated, and Harry leaped into the fireplace. He arrived stumbling and covered with soot, as usual, but it didn't matter. Jamie was waiting for him. His son needed him.

At the moment, it was hard to remember that he had once considered himself a bad father. He was burned up with the realization of what it meant to be a father, really. He was alive and afire with it, and he would have fought Malfoy right now if he tried to hold him back, divorced Ginny if that was what Jamie wanted.

_Sometimes, I can do all right._

* * *

"—and then I thought they would lose track of me if I climbed up the outside of Gryffindor Tower—" Jamie broke off and closed his eyes, his breathing shallow and quick. Harry knew he was trying to overcome his pain or not show it. He seemed to think he should be ashamed if he cried in front of his father.

Harry squeezed his hand again and bent over him. "I'm here," he whispered. "I promise, Jamie. It doesn't matter what you say. I'm always here."

Jamie caught his breath, and squeezed back. His right hand was the only thing on his body that wasn't broken, Harry thought. He didn't see how Jamie was still conscious. Broken legs, broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder. Harry had suffered his share of injuries, but none like this. His son was incredibly brave, and Harry was incredibly proud of him.

Not so proud of what had brought his son here, admittedly, which was Jamie climbing outside after _another _theft and trying to run away from the Ravenclaw who had found out that Jamie had broken into his trunk. But that was something Harry really felt they didn't need to get into discussing. It was enough that Jamie had been humiliated and hurt, and his suffering was his way of paying for it.

"—but I was wrong." Jamie shut his eyes, and Harry gave his hand another squeeze. Something else had occurred to him, something that he thought Madam Juniper might have left out of the story in her eagerness to get Jamie healed, but which he couldn't live without knowing.

"Jamie," he said, keeping his voice gentle so that his son wouldn't have to answer the question if he was in too much pain to do so. "Did someone _push _you out the window? Was there ever a—a time when they came close to it? I need you to answer that if you can."

Jamie opened his eyes and stared at him, the first time he had managed to open his eyes fully since Harry arrived. Then he began to shake his head.

"Lie still," said Madam Juniper, who hadn't looked up from running yet another diagnostic scan on the bones on Jamie's right arm. "I'm almost done with this."

Harry touched his son's cheek, and Jamie shut his eyes and turned his head that way. He whispered, "No, Dad. I was climbing—I'm sure I'm a good climber—and then I slipped and fell. No one cast a spell at me or pushed me or anything."

Harry leaned over and kissed Jamie's forehead. "Good," he whispered. "You're going to be a good boy and take the Skele-Gro, right?"

Jamie shifted and glared at the bottle that Madam Juniper was holding out. "It's the wrong color," he whinged. "I _know _that Skele-Gro isn't supposed to look like that when you brew it."

Harry looked at the potion, frowning in concentration, and then moved it over so that light could sparkle on the bottle in the opposite direction. "There, Jamie. Does that look more like it should? The light was reflecting off the bottle. Maybe it made it look brighter than it should."

Jamie swallowed and closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth.

Harry patted his cheek and stepped out of the way so that Madam Juniper could get the potion down Jamie's throat on the first try. She then massaged until he swallowed. Jamie grimaced and gagged and made a show of pounding the bed with his good hand, but at least the potion was inside him, and Harry could see the way that his eyes were falling shut.

Madam Juniper spelled him asleep the rest of the way, and then glanced at Harry with a smile. "Thank you for coming here, Auror Potter. I appreciate it. I thought there was no way I could get him to take it."

Harry gave her a mechanical smile, the only kind he could muster when his son was lying in the bed like that. He reached out and softly pushed Jamie's hair back from his forehead, his hand lingering on his son's cheek. Jamie moaned and stirred in his sleep, and Harry pulled his hand back reluctantly. Jamie was a light sleeper, and the last thing Harry wanted was to interfere and make it hard for him to rest.

Juniper nodded to him. "Probably best to go home and let him get some sleep, Auror Potter. Thank you again for coming."

Harry turned towards the door of the hospital wing, only to collide with someone smaller than him, but still solid enough to rock him on his feet. He staggered back with an _oof_, and blinked a little as he watched his second son make his way to Jamie's bed, where he leaned over and whispered appealingly, "Jamie?"

"He'll be all right, Al," Madam Juniper said, and patted Al on the shoulder. Harry ached as he watched. That should be _his _place, to pat Al and reassure him, while Al looked at Jamie with a face that said he would have gladly fallen from the Tower in his brother's place. "Skele-Gro takes some time to regrow the bones, and he'll have to spend a few days in bed. But the potion's improved wonderfully in the last few years, you know. It works faster now."

"Jamie would know that." Al hadn't moved his gaze from his brother's face. "I don't care."

Madam Juniper fell silent, blinking. Harry sighed. If they had been in a normal situation, he would have said something to Al about rudeness, but how could he right now? Al was worried about Jamie. Hell, Harry was, too. He thought about staying here until morning. He didn't have any more pressing call on his time, now that his Auror job was gone. And God knew he wouldn't sleep tonight, not after this.

"Mr. Potter?"

Harry turned around. Scorpius Malfoy was hovering in the door of the hospital wing. Harry nodded to him. "Hullo, Scorpius. Like Madam Juniper was saying, Jamie will be fine."

Scorpius gave him a small, tight smile. "Good. Al was so scared when he heard." He hesitated, and Harry saw a further tightness to the lines of his face that had nothing to do with worry over Jamie, or even over Al.

Harry wanted to sigh. He wanted to pretend that he didn't see and turn away. Did _everything _have to depend on him? Wasn't it enough that he'd saved Scorpius's life and now was going through letting Malfoy pay back the life-debt because of him?

But what he had told Malfoy was true. He _liked _saving people and solving their problems, and he wouldn't let this go simply because someone else might notice. Maybe no one else would. Al had Jamie to concentrate on right now, and Harry had taken Scorpius's father away from him.

"What is it?" Harry asked softly, crouching down in front of Scorpius and waiting until Scorpius looked back at him to give him an encouraging smile.

Scorpius peered at him. He didn't really look much like Malfoy, Harry thought. Not now that he'd spent some time around Malfoy, and could picture the way his jaw stuck out when he was angry and the way his eyes flashed, instead of picturing the boy he'd known at Hogwarts. Astoria must have given Scorpius that wistful look.

"It's just—I'm grateful for what you did for me." Scorpius rushed through the words as though he didn't care about the life-debt, which warmed Harry's heart. He was glad that _someone _could take his actions for the gift they were, instead of becoming obsessed with debts and who owed who what, the way Malfoy was. "But I want to pay my own debts, you know? And I know what my father has said about my birthday at the end of this month, but it doesn't matter. I know exactly what kind of gift I could give you to clear the debt."

Harry blinked and cleared his throat. There was an odd fluttering in his stomach, one that had nothing to do with whether Malfoy knew that Scorpius would be raiding the Malfoy cellars to give him a gift. "Did you talk to your dad about what he was doing to pay me back?"

Scorpius nodded, eyes intense. "And I don't think he should. My mum says that people need to learn how to live on their own. No one can teach you."

"It sounds like she's a wise woman," Harry said, his heart dragging down. "You want me to ask your dad to step back and let you pay the debt?"

"Please?" Scorpius looked even more wistful. "I tried to talk to him about it, but he's just so _determined _that he's going to pay it off and I'm going to go into my thirteenth birthday clear of it. He didn't wait and listen to me, or see if I had any plan to pay it back. I think he _wanted _to do it this way, honestly." Scorpius took a deep breath and straightened his back. "But I don't."

Harry had so many things that he wanted to ask. Malfoy had offered him money at first. Why do that if he had wanted to stay in Harry's house and fix his life all along?

Then again, it made no sense that he would want that, either. And Scorpius was still only twelve. He could be mistaken.

But Harry stopped himself from asking, because it would put an unfair burden on Scorpius. He didn't have a divorce to drag Scorpius into the middle of, but he had wanted to stop putting such burdens on his own children. He would do the same thing with Scorpius and not treat him like an adult who should answer questions that might not be real.

"All right," he said. "And you don't need to pay the debt by the time you turn thirteen?"

Scorpius shook his head vigorously enough that his hair flopped into his eyes, and Al looked at them curiously from beside Jamie's bed. "I know my dad thinks that, but I've read up on the ceremony. And Mum told me some things about it, too. Dad thought it was fair she should know about it when they were still married."

Harry blinked. He thought Malfoy and Greengrass had got divorced years ago.

Then again, the hyper-organized Malfoy he knew might well have told his wife about some of the Malfoy ceremonies years in advance, thinking they would still be married then.

"And I'm going to be okay." Scorpius smiled at Harry. "Thanks for saving my life, Mr. Potter. I don't think I said that before. Will you _please _write a letter to my dad and tell him to come home? It's my debt."

Harry nodded. "Of course I will." He could write the letter while he watched Jamie sleep. He thought Scorpius had to be very observant and smart if he had realized that Harry would rather stay here with his son than just go home and tell Malfoy he had to leave.

Or maybe he knew Harry was a coward about emotional confrontations at heart, and would prefer to do it this way.

"Let me find some ink and parchment, and I'll start right away." He pressed Scorpius's shoulder. "You're welcome to stay here with me and Al and Jamie if you want."

Scorpius nodded. "I'll stay until Al wants to go back to bed. Thanks, Mr. Potter." He flashed Harry another charming smile and sat down on the bed next to Jamie's, leaning in to speak to Al.

Harry sighed and went to find the ink and parchment he had talked about. This wasn't going to be easy. But the debt really did belong to Scorpius. It didn't matter that Harry might want Malfoy to stay or what he had promised Kreacher. Scorpius was the one who got to choose what to do with his own life.

* * *

It was nearly six before Harry finished the letter, or thought he had it right, anyway. He leaned back and read it before he took it to the Owlery.

_Dear Malfoy,_

_I got called to Hogwarts in the middle of the night because Jamie fell from Gryffindor Tower. Al came to see about his brother, and Scorpius came with him. Scorpius told me that he doesn't mind still having the life-debt on his thirteenth birthday. He would rather pay me back himself. So you don't have to stay any longer. I think I'm pretty good, anyway, now that you've taught me what was going on and I'm not working on the case with the Spiders anymore._

_Thank you for all your help. You have a good, responsible son._

_Potter._

Harry sighed and rose to his feet. He hoped one of the school owls would be awake already and amenable to carrying the letter. The last thing he needed was pecked fingers this morning on top of everything else.

He was already planning when he would have to leave in his head, if Jamie didn't wake up and Harry couldn't talk to him, when the Floo in the hospital wing flared. Harry turned around, curious. Both Scorpius and Al were back in the Slytherin common room, and Madam Juniper was snatching a little sleep on a cot in the next room. Maybe it was Madam Pomfrey returning. Harry had to admit that he would be glad to give Jamie into her care. He liked Madam Juniper; he just didn't trust her as much as the mediwitch who had taken care of _him_.

But it was Ginny who stepped out of the Floo and looked at him with her jaw twitching. A quick glance at the bed told her all the children were asleep, Harry thought, and she turned back to him.

"Where's Lily?" Harry whispered.

"With Mum." Ginny bit down on some of the words that Harry thought she wanted to say, and then she muttered, "I need to talk to you, all right? Outside."

Harry nodded and held up the letter. "I need to send this. Want to walk to the Owlery?"

Ginny looked at him sideways as though she was considering why he was acting so ordinary, but she nodded back. "Okay."

They left, side-by-side, and with Harry's spine prickling. He was a lot less calm than he was showing to Ginny at the moment.

_And what disaster is it going to be this time?_


	20. Apologia

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty—Apologia_

"What did you want to talk about?"

Ginny shook her head and twitched a little. They were walking up the last staircase that led to the Owlery, and she had been silent all the way from the hospital wing. Harry sighed. He could appreciate that she wanted to stay quiet until they were in a place where no one could hear them, but this was getting a little ridiculous. Most of the students were asleep.

"At least give me a _hint_," Harry said. It was the sort of thing he would have said before, in their arguments, but he supposed he might not have said it like this, in the kind of tone that would make her turn and stare at him.

"You don't deserve to have a hint," Ginny whispered. "I can't _believe _what you did."

"Not telling you about Jamie?" Harry shook his head. He supposed he should have done that, but… "I'm sorry. I didn't think about it at first, and then I thought waking you up in the middle of the night could make us argue."

Ginny spun around to glare at him. Harry couldn't help contrasting her with Malfoy. She was dynamic, moving, _volatile. _Malfoy acted as though he had swallowed some emotion-repressing potion years ago.

"So it's leading to an argument now instead," Ginny said in a clipped voice. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "But that's not what I came to discuss. I wanted to talk about what you said the other day."

"I don't see what's to discuss about _that_," Harry said, his voice deepening to a hiss. He saw her flinch, but he couldn't even feel bad about it. She flinched all the time when he sounded as if he was about to speak Parseltongue, due to her memories of Tom Riddle. But Harry had never actually spoken it in front of her since the war ended, and she ought to trust him not to do it by now. "You thought I cheated and thought I was gay. Now you know I wasn't."

Ginny opened her eyes slowly. "We can't fight like this. Our children need us."

"Our children _also _need you not to talk shit about me in front of them," Harry snapped back. "Not to imply that I'm gay and repeat it so much that they repeat it to _me. _Stand up and take some bloody responsibility for your own faults, Ginny."

The words bubbled in his mouth like hot tea, and letting them out felt just as satisfying as drinking the tea. Harry blinked and nearly raised his hand to touch his mouth, but Ginny would find something to mock in that gesture, too, and he didn't want to listen to her right now. Maybe there had been even better reasons for them getting divorced than he had thought of before.

Ginny's eyes narrowed, near slits in her face. But she caught herself back from whatever she was about to say, and just stood there panting instead. Then she turned around and climbed up the stairs, gesturing him to follow. Harry grunted and did. He reckoned the Owlery probably would be pretty private at this time of morning.

Once he was back in the round stone room, the familiar smell of feathers and dust enveloped him. Harry swallowed a little and searched for an owl he could send the letter with. He avoided the white one that opened one eye and turned towards him. Yes, he wasn't over Hedwig yet. So what? Unlike the way he treated his children and his ex-wife, that mattered to no one but him.

He settled on a barn owl that hopped curiously to the edge of its perch and looked at him when Harry stood below. Harry gave it a rind of bacon that had been in his pocket for God knew how long, but the owl gnawed it eagerly enough, and extended its leg for the letter. Harry watched it leap into the air and carry the letter away, exhaling slowly. So Malfoy would know soon, and have to leave.

It was for the best. It really must be, when Scorpius himself had asked for it. The life-debt was ultimately his.

Harry sighed again, and sneezed as feathers went up his nose.

"Harry."

He turned and looked around. Ginny had seated herself near one of the one other walls, at the bottom of it, her arms folded and hair cast down over the top of her knees. Harry made his way to her and sat down next to her, glancing at her curiously.

Ginny was breathing as though she liked the smell of the Owlery, too, and couldn't get enough of it. Or more as if she wanted to get her emotions under control, Harry thought. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, and Harry cast a wordless Warming Charm on her. That relaxed the shivers, but not the tense muscles.

Well, Harry had done all he could. He leaned back and raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to say something.

Ginny swallowed and said, "I—I'm sorry that I said and thought those things about you. And sorrier that I said them in front of Lily." She turned around and eyed Harry. "But you must know it was irresistible, the amount of time you spent around the other Aurors."

Harry rolled his eyes. "And did you think the same thing about Ron?"

"Well, no. But he was _married_."

Harry stared at the white band on her finger where the wedding ring had been until lately, and opened his mouth.

"Just let me say this," Ginny whispered, holding up a hand. "_Please_."

Harry grunted and settled back. It was none of his business if Ginny wanted to be an idiot, he supposed. He needed to get along with her for the sake of his children. He could choose how angry to be as long as she wasn't dragging them into it, though.

"He was married," Ginny repeated. "He cared about what his wife was doing. He talks about her _all the time. _And I know from Hermione that their sex life was more than vigorous." She turned and stared at Harry. "Does that sound like _us _at all?"

Harry could feel himself flushing. But he had to admit the truth. "No," he said.

"I never thought about you," Ginny said. "Not enough. You never thought about me. We thought more about Quidditch and Auror work, and then reporting and Auror work." She shut her eyes. "And the children. Maybe we would have concentrated more on each other if we'd never had children—"

"You can't wish them out of existence." Harry barely got the words out. There just wasn't enough breath in his lungs to really power them.

"No." Ginny opened her eyes again and gave him another shrug. "Not really. But maybe we would have concentrated more on each other if we were all we had."

Harry said nothing. He didn't even know whether he could find the strength to agree. There was—there was just no way he could imagine his life without their children.

"I don't think we were really married." Ginny rubbed the pale ring on her finger as if it were the real thing. "We weren't _meant _to be married. And that's why I thought you were gay, and cheating. I knew you had passion. I thought you were taking it and putting it somewhere else."

Harry took a deep breath and made himself move on from the moment. Ginny loved their kids. She did, or she wouldn't have come here and said they had to get along for their sake. "No. I—I put it into my work, maybe. But I never took it away from you and deprived you of it deliberately, Ginny. I would never do that."

Ginny looked at him, eyes sad. "One way or the other, it happened," she said, and stood up.

Harry followed her, swallowing a little. "So you think we can get along for the kids' sake?" he asked.

Ginny closed her eyes and nodded. "But we need a schedule for Lily. She needs stability, and I can't—I can't have her with me all the time. It wouldn't be good for her even if I could."

"I agree," Harry said, feeling borne up on the waves of a liquid that felt like happiness. "I tried to take a holiday, and Robards told me that I should resign if I was that devoted to having time off. So I have more time now. What do you say to me having her half the week, and you having her half the week? I could take her Friday to Tuesday?"

Ginny looked at him, mouth open. "You _resigned_?"

Harry paused, then shrugged. That was another thing he might have told Ginny about, but in the rush of events, it had seemed even further away from his mind than telling her about Jamie. Ginny had an interest in Jamie; she couldn't have any interest in his job, except that it would leave him more time to take care of Lily. "Yes."

Ginny was staring at him as if she had never seen him before. "Who?" she whispered. "Who could make you do that? I never could, and that—that leaves—"

"_Potter_."

Harry snapped his head up. He hadn't heard Malfoy come into the Owlery, and that in itself was remarkable. Not only would Harry have expected to hear the owls complaining about a stranger, but he'd thought he'd got rather attuned to Malfoy's movements around his house the past few days.

Malfoy was striding towards him with an absolutely white face that made Harry turn to the side, fearing a little for what he might do to Ginny. But from the way Malfoy came to a halt in front of him and stood staring, Harry decided that whatever had upset him wasn't her.

Then Harry saw the letter clutched in his hand. _His _letter. The one he had written with the news of Jamie's fall and Scorpius's willingness to assume the life-debt.

"How did you get that so quickly?" he blurted. "I sent it out only ten minutes ago—"

"I woke, and Kreacher told me where you had gone." Malfoy moved a step closer, although they were already standing as close as Harry had thought Malfoy was comfortable coming. His hand shook where he clutched the paper, and Harry suspected he was a second from crumpling it. "I followed you here. And then to receive _this_…"

His rage was a living, breathing thing between them. Harry straightened his shoulders. He'd let Malfoy overwhelm him with his rage and his critical complaints once before, but he couldn't do that now. He _had _to show Malfoy that this was different, this was important. His _son _had asked it.

"You read it," he said. "So you must know why I'm asking you to move out."

"Move out?" Ginny asked from behind them. Harry didn't need to turn around to know that she would be watching them with breathless interest. He did know her well enough for that, and then, she was a newspaper reporter, and interesting events like this were her job.

Malfoy ignored her. "It doesn't matter what my son wants," he said, and enunciated each word so clearly that Harry had to believe him, even though he would never have thought Malfoy someone to ignore his son's desires like that. "I have already begun to pay the life-debt. You cannot—you cannot pay half of it and leave the other half owing. Life-debts are not Galleons."

Harry shook his head and responded the only way he could. "But we have so many strange life-debts and connections swirling around us already that one more won't make much difference. Besides, it's Scorpius's debt."

Malfoy leaned forwards and glared into his eyes. Harry felt himself try to coil up, but fought the impulse. He was done with running away. And this time, he had someone else's interests than just his own to fight for. Scorpius's interests were _important. _

"You yield too easily to children," Malfoy whispered. "To people in general, but most especially to children. Did my son given any reason for this _extraordinary _request? He knew what I was going to do, and he gave no sign of disapproving before now. Why did he say that he wanted to pay it back himself?"

"Because he said that he didn't care that much about still having a debt on his birthday," Harry said slowly. Malfoy _must _know Scorpius better than he did. Didn't he know the reasons already? More, didn't he care about them? That was what confused Harry most of all. "He said that his mother told him that Malfoy ceremonies were just ceremonies, or something like that." His head felt fuzzy. Another night without sleep was probably at least partially to blame for that. "I don't—Malfoy, I wasn't really paying attention, if you must know. It made sense to me at the time. It's his honor, his debt."

Then he remembered something he should have remembered before. He leaned forwards and looked into Malfoy's eyes, and their mouths were almost brushing and he was going to _ignore _that. "He said he wanted you back. You were spending too much time with me and not enough with him."

There was a silence of breathing chaos between them.

Then Malfoy said, still without backing away, "I've made my choice. And it'll be only a few weeks more. He can wait that long."

"But your son _needs you_." Harry was a little ashamed of the way his voice cracked, but surely Malfoy could see that Scorpius was more important than any of them, more important than anything Harry could say. "Malfoy. Don't you _see_?"

"He might want me to visit him," Malfoy said, without turning a hair. "I can do that this weekend. But at the moment, you need me more."

Harry stared at him. He tried to imagine saying the same thing about one of his own children, and couldn't.

_Not that you didn't _do _it before, _said a poisoned voice at the back of his mind that Harry had had heard before, when he put his job ahead of his family. _But you never admitted it so blatantly. You never thought about them when you took on all those extra cases and covered for those Aurors who could bloody well have done their own work._

Harry strangled the voice. Yes, he had made those mistakes. Now he wouldn't make them again, not now that he was aware of them.

But he had to keep the man who had _helped _him to become aware of them from making a mistake of his own.

"Malfoy," he whispered. He wondered for a second if he should use his first name, but that felt like a step too far, one he shouldn't make unless he meant it. "Please. Do you hear what you're saying? You're putting me in front of your son. How do you think he would feel if he could hear you?"

"He would understand," Malfoy said. "Unlike yours, _my _son can talk to me. I will visit with him tomorrow. I'll explain why I want to pay the life-debt this way, and how we can't stop with it half-paid. But he can't have everything he wants. It's a lesson my father should have taught me. I made sure that Scorpius learned it."

Harry winced at those comments about his children, but he wasn't sure how he was supposed to respond to the rest of it. Malfoy was putting him in front of Scorpius, and he didn't think Scorpius would mind?

"I can talk to him, and he can talk to me, and make me understand," Malfoy said, and then his eyes darkened and he shifted nearer still. Harry could feel a blush prickling up his face. It was just, Ginny was behind them right now, and what would she think? But Malfoy still hadn't indicated that he'd noticed her.

"But you," Malfoy said, his voice a hiss that frightened Harry as it never had when they were students at Hogwarts. "You had no right to write that letter and ask me to stay away from you, to _leave. _If you were going to tell me that, at least have the courage and grace to say it in person."

Harry swallowed. "I didn't want to leave Jamie. And having an argument with you—" He could feel Ginny staring, since the words were so similar to what he'd said to her, but he still didn't look back. "I didn't want one."

"You should have realized," Malfoy said, his teeth bared just as hard as if he was going to bite Harry's lips in half, "that there would be one either way. I made a promise, Potter, to help fulfill the life-debt this way. And what promises I make, _I keep._"

The words felt as though they were a cord around Harry's neck, strangling him. Harry fell back an uneasy step, and Malfoy followed. He wasn't as overbearing as he had been in the drawing room, but he was close enough to make Harry sweat.

"I made this promise," Malfoy said. "You accepted this way to break the life-debt. This is the way it is. Scorpius may be missing me, or he may have got something into his head that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that life-debts work. Regardless, I _will _correct it." He lifted his head and looked for a second like a poised hawk ready to sweep down on his son. Then he met Harry's eyes again, and frowned. "Besides, you once again missed your fair share of sleep. Is your son going to be all right?"

"Sleeping for a few days, but he'll be all right," Harry said.

"That's more than you told me," Ginny said.

Harry turned around and stared at her. "The first thing you said when you came through the Floo was that you wanted to talk to me out in the corridor!"

Ginny flushed, but didn't say anything. Her eyes were darting between him and Malfoy in a way Harry didn't like at all.

"Look, Ginny," Harry began, wondering how he could deflect what she suspected, and then deciding there was really no way and he might as well go for the direct approach. "I'm not gay."

"You give more of your passion to a man," Ginny said. "You _listen _to him more than you ever listened to me." She shook her head a little. "I believe you didn't cheat on me now. Because I never saw that trapped look in your eyes before."

She turned and left the Owlery. Harry stared after her, and felt Malfoy's hand on his arm.

"We are going home," Malfoy said, in a pleasant voice whose sweetness didn't cover its steel. "I'll send Kreacher to Hogwarts to talk to Madam Juniper and make sure that you get regular reports on Jamie. But you are going to _bed_." The hold on his arm was hard enough to make Harry wince.

"I had to do it," Harry said. "I had to come."

Malfoy looked sideways at him. "You're mistaken if you think that's why I'm angry."

Harry just looked at him, wordless. He had said all he could about Scorpius, and it seemed he still hadn't convinced Malfoy.

"I am staying," Malfoy said, and held his wand up. Harry thought he might cast a Sleeping Charm or try to break the anti-Apparition wards around Hogwarts, but instead, he just waited, looking at Harry.

It finally struck Harry what he was waiting for. He swallowed and said, "I agreed to that. And if you think that it won't hurt Scorpius…"

"I can take away his pain."

So confident, so simple. Harry wished he could be like that with his own children.

He nodded, and Malfoy set fire to the letter, then guided him out of the Owlery through the rain of ashes.


	21. Speaking

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twenty-One—Speaking_

"I would like to speak with my son, please."

"Mr. Malfoy." Madam Juniper was _fluttering_, Harry saw. He had never made her react that way. Now she bit her lip and shifted her hand over her bosom, and Malfoy gave a half-smile. "I don't know if that's possible. He's still in the infirmary, but he's helping his friend Al Potter cope with his brother's injuries…"

"If he's in the infirmary and not in classes, then I need to speak with him anyway," Malfoy said. His voice was low and calm, and so neutral that Harry strained to hear any emotion in it and could make out none. "He should be in classes this time of the day."

"Yes, but." Madam Juniper didn't seem to know how to finish that sentence, so she didn't. She finally stepped aside and Harry heard murmuring. Malfoy was down on his knees in front of the fireplace in Harry's drawing room. Harry stood back far enough that Scorpius couldn't see him if he looked out of the fire. Malfoy had wanted Harry there to hear the discussion of the life-debt, but Harry was reluctant to interrupt the natural, normal way that father and son spoke to each other. This was their compromise.

"Hello, Scorpius," said Malfoy, when his son's face appeared. "Mr. Potter told me that you wanted to pay the life-debt. Why is that?"

Scorpius blinked at his father. Then he said, "Well, it's my life-debt, right? So I should be able to."

"But I asked you what you wanted to do about this, and the fact that your thirteenth birthday was coming up in a few weeks." Malfoy remained calm. Harry thought the iciness was kind of unnatural and not the best way to deal with a child, most of the time, but he had to admit that it obviously worked here. "You said that you were all right with me paying the debt. You said that you would rather concentrate on school and your classes. What changed?"

Scorpius lowered his head and gripped the fold of his cloak for a second. Then he said, head still bowed, "I just realized that you'll be spending a lot of time with Potter—"

"Call him Mr. Potter." Malfoy's voice had turned from neutral to cold, so fast that Harry gaped at the back of his head. How had he _managed _that? "He saved your life. You owe him the courtesy."

Scorpius stared, then nodded. Harry bit his tongue on the temptation to say that Scorpius didn't need to do that. A fine thing _that _would be, revealing his presence after they had deciding on not doing it

_I am trying to keep my promises to him_.

"Mr. Potter doesn't need you the way I do," Scorpius said, and his cheeks were flushed, Harry could tell that much, even with the green color of the fire interfering. "He—he doesn't need you at all, I think. I can think of other ways to pay the life-debt. I even know what I would give him."

"What is that?" Harry couldn't tell whether Malfoy was humoring Scorpius or not. His voice had gone back to neutral.

"I was going to give him that portrait of the Black woman that hangs in the upper attics," Scorpius said. "You said she knew his godfather. You told me that," he added, a little hesitantly, perhaps because of the look on Malfoy's face. "I thought that way, he could get to know his godfather. Al said he didn't know him all that well, he only got two years with him, and, well…"

Scorpius trailed off while Malfoy looked at him. Then Malfoy nodded. "That's a very good thought," he said. "And given that I owe Mr. Potter other life-debts, then it might make a suitable gift when I'm finished here. But you haven't told me what changed, why you agreed to let me pay the debt my way and then changed your mind."

Scorpius looked down and swished his foot back and forth over the infirmary floor.

"I'm waiting, Scorpius." Malfoy was so calm, but Scorpius jerked his head up as if it was on springs.

"All right, all _right_," Scorpius said. "Al told me that his father didn't need to be tied up with you, Dad. He said that he needed his dad more than you did. I'm sorry," and this time that was _definitely _because of the expression on Malfoy's face. "I am! But I said that I would try to get you away from him."

Harry shut his eyes. _Al. Why couldn't you come to me? _

But a number of excellent answers sprang to mind, and all of them concentrated on how much he had failed his children, that they couldn't even trust in him to do a little thing right. Harry swallowed his protests and numbly opened his eyes, waiting for the next hurtful revelation.

"What does Al need his father so badly for?" Malfoy asked. He still hadn't changed his tone or his posture, and now Harry could see the good side of that. "He saw him in the hospital wing. I don't believe he mentioned to him that he wanted him to stay."

"That's not for me to say." Scorpius was really interested in the foot that was stirring the hem of his robe now. "But he said that I should see if I could pay the life-debt, and I had to do _something. _I owe Mr. Potter a life-debt, but he's my best friend, Dad."

He looked up at Malfoy under lowered eyelashes, and Harry had to admit, he would have melted right then. But Malfoy just looked back, mildly but steadily, and Scorpius let his head droop again and gave a forlorn-sounding sigh.

"I know that you were trying to do what you thought was best," Malfoy said. "But you gave your word. Tell your friend to talk to his father about what he needs. I won't be at Mr. Potter's house this weekend. Al can come visit with his father then, or do anything else he needs to. But he shouldn't sneak around and make other people reason out his meaning, especially when he has the chance to talk to his father face-to-face and doesn't take it."

Scorpius was subjecting the floor of the hospital wing to such an intense study that Harry thought he could probably pass an exam on it. "He won't like that," he whispered. "He's already upset with me for—I mean, he'll be upset with me once he found out that I told the truth."

"He's the same age as you," Malfoy said. He ignored the way that Harry moved. Al was a month younger than Scorpius, actually. But Harry supposed the difference didn't matter that much. "He can talk to his father instead of trying to trick him. You can send him to talk to me first, if you want. But he's going to do that instead of trying to pressure you into paying the life-debt with that portrait."

Scorpius swallowed and nodded. Then he looked up and studied Malfoy with desperate eyes. "Are you angry at me, Father?"

_Father _seemed to be reserved for moments that were less formal, Harry thought, which wasn't the way he would have imagined it.

Malfoy smiled at his son, and there was no reserve about this smile, any more than there had been reserve about his intensity when Malfoy went after Harry about not keeping his promises. "No," he said. "You found yourself caught between your father and your friend, and tried to keep promises to both of them. But in the future, I trust that you'll tell your friend to do his own dirty work."

No question at the end of that sentence, Harry thought. Malfoy seemed to trust his son utterly. Harry swallowed down envy and concentrated on watching the way Scorpius tossed off a little salute. If he was hurt by what Malfoy had said to him, Harry couldn't detect it.

"Thank you, Dad. I love you."

Malfoy whispered the same words back, making Harry wish that he had chosen to stay outside the drawing room after all. But the next instant, the fire puffed and went back to ordinary flame, and Malfoy turned around with the same calm expression that he wore most of the time in Harry's house. "I thought it was something like that."

"How did you know?" Harry asked. He had to admit that if one of his children had told him something about a life-debt and then changed their minds, he would have accepted it as their privilege to do that.

"Because Scorpius understood the circumstances very clearly," Malfoy said. "I explained them all to him, and what he could do to pay the life-debt back and what he couldn't. He said that he was happy to have me do it. _Happy, _not just giving in because he didn't want to think about it. His idea about the portrait is a good one. When I'm done giving you some of your life back, if you still want the picture, you can have it."

Harry swallowed. "You—you still could have accepted his decision and gone away, you know."

Malfoy gave him one of those sideways-tilted-head looks that made Harry's insides squirm. "But I don't stop halfway paying through one of my debts," Malfoy said, slowly and clearly enough to make Harry ache a little. "I do what has to be done, and then I count the cost." He snapped himself back to a more normal expression, and shook his head. "You act as though it's horrible for me to be here."

"Sometimes you act as though it is," Harry muttered.

"Only when you make a promise to act one way, and then do something else instead." Malfoy took a single step towards him, and they might have been back in the Owlery. "Are you going to keep it this time?"

Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. "I understand that it means a lot to you, and so it means a lot to me. It's just—I wanted you to know that you _could _go. Your family is important to you."

"And so is clearing this debt," Malfoy said. "Because of that. In addition to that. Not in spite of it, or in place of it. You understand?"

Harry nodded, and rubbed his eyes again. Between one blink and another—but of course, when Harry didn't actually have his eyes on him—Malfoy turned back into the somewhat-annoying caretaker that Harry had become used to. He took Harry's elbow and steered him towards the door of the drawing room.

Harry knew exactly where they were going, and tried to plant his feet. "I have to stay by the fireplace," he said. "In case Madam Juniper calls with news about Jamie."

"I intend to stay awake myself," Malfoy said. "Unlike _some _people, I got a full night's sleep, and a relaxing shower beforehand."

"I showered!"

Ignoring that, Malfoy piloted him into his bedroom. He paused and examined the walls that Harry had to admit were rather bare. Harry tensed a little, ready to defend himself, but Malfoy did nothing except cluck his tongue, once, and then ignore it the way he'd ignored Harry's protests. He settled Harry on the bed and stripped off his boots, then pulled the brown robes off over Harry's head with a sweep of his wand.

Harry yelped and clapped his hands over his groin. He'd only put on the robes last night, and that left his bits hanging out in front of Malfoy. Or, well, okay, he was wearing pants, too, but it was the principle of the thing.

Malfoy didn't seem to understand about principles. He just stood there, watching Harry, and Harry finally nodded and dropped his hands. Then he Summoned one of Dudley's big, old shirts that hung in the wardrobe behind his Auror robes, and draped it over himself. It covered him down to the middle of his thighs, still, and hid his bits as well as everything else.

"Good," Malfoy said, although his voice was a little husky, which made Harry shoot him a suspicious look. What was he saying _good _for? "Now, can you rest? Or do you need a Sleeping Draught? I'll be happy to give you one. I know you might be worried about your sons."

"Only one of them was injured," Harry muttered as he bedded down and turned his face to the wall.

"Yes, but the other one is demonstrating a tendency to manipulate his best friend and try to manipulate me, instead of just coming to you and telling you straight out what he wants," Malfoy said dryly. "And the other is a chronic thief, which, from what I could pick up from the house-elf, is part of the reason he's now in the hospital wing. And—"

"You're _not helping_." Harry turned over to glare at him. "Yes, I would like a Sleeping Draught. Please," he added, when Malfoy seemed disposed to linger and stare at him.

Malfoy sniffed and left the room. Harry sighed and touched his forehead. He felt almost limp and damp with lack of sleep, but part of his mind still ran in circles. What would he do if Jamie needed him while he was asleep, under the influence of the potion, and couldn't wake up? There was no way that Malfoy would go to Hogwarts in his place, and Ginny—

Harry paused.

It occurred to him, for the first time, that it was strange Madam Juniper hadn't contacted both him _and _Ginny. Ginny had been angry that Harry hadn't told her about Jamie's fall, but exactly why was it his responsibility to do that? Harry himself wouldn't have known if Madam Juniper hadn't firecalled _him_.

With a disgusted sigh, Harry rolled back over on his pillow. Something else to worry about. Either Jamie had told Madam Juniper that he wanted her to talk to his dad and not his mum, or everybody was just so used to depending on Harry for everything that Madam Juniper hadn't thought about Ginny.

Not horrible, sinister explanations. But ones that did show him how wound up he'd got in people's expectations and serving as the sole bulwark in times of distress, the sole receptacle for blame if someone needed to find fault.

"Yes, you need the Sleeping Draught if you're going to wrinkle your forehead up like that."

Harry reached absently for the vial that Malfoy held, but Malfoy pulled his hand back and stood looking at him with patient eyes. "The potion doesn't work well on a mind that's racing," he said.

"What good is it, then?" Harry snapped. "I never was good at clearing my mind for bloody Occlumency. Are you telling me that I need to learn _that _before I can take your damn potion?"

Malfoy sat down on the bed beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. Harry winced a little. For some reason, it felt much warmer, as though Malfoy was setting a brand on him, when he touched Harry through a simple shirt and not his robes.

Malfoy paused, but didn't stop touching Harry, and didn't ask if Harry wanted him to. He looked him in the eye instead, and asked, "What happened? Surely your house-elf didn't bring you more bad news in the short time I was gone?" He hesitated, then added, "Besides, unless he has a twin, he was in the kitchen making breakfast."

Harry shook his head. He didn't even know if he could speak about the misery clogging his throat. It would sound silly. Malfoy was supposed to teach him to stand up for himself, wasn't he, not to give in to silly emotion?

Malfoy just sat there, waiting, and Harry at last realized that he wouldn't go away until Harry said something. _Probably won't give me the potion, either, _Harry thought, and swallowed enough of the salty tear-mixture that he could speak. "I was wondering why Madam Juniper didn't firecall Ginny. Either Jamie didn't want her to, or she thought I was the only one who could take care of my son. And then Ginny came in and blamed _me _for not letting her know, even though Madam Juniper contacted _me_. Why couldn't she contact Ginny at the same time?"

Malfoy was quiet for long seconds. Then he said, "I think she may have forgotten. Or, as you say, she's come to think that you're the one responsible for fixing your children. Has she firecalled you before when they were injured?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "But we were married then." Malfoy stared at him, and Harry sighed and explained, "So we both got the message at the same time."

"And since the divorce?" Malfoy asked, softly. "Or if you were home and your wife wasn't? You never got the only message?"

"Yeah." Harry mopped his face with one hand. "But—I mean, I always told Ginny. I didn't think of it this time. I don't know why."

Malfoy leaned forwards and took both his shoulders. Harry had thought he would want to flinch, given that branding heat; it had to be stronger if it was on both sides of his body and not just one. But instead, he found himself sitting still and staring Malfoy in the eye.

"Listen to me," Malfoy whispered. "Even if you forgot and you were the one who should have done it, it's not an unpardonable sin. Maybe enough for your wife to be angry at you. It doesn't mean that you're a horrible failure of a father. Any more than the mediwitch forgetting to firecall Weasley means that she's a horrible person, rather than just forgetful. You have to stop taking these moments so personally and assuming that you—that you _should _wallow in guilt."

"It feels like the only way of making it up to them," Harry whispered, naming aloud, for the first time maybe, something he'd always thought. "If I feel bad about it. It's payment for doing the stupid thing in the first place."

Malfoy's hands tightened. "And does that make it better?"

"No," Harry said. Guilt hadn't helped with Lily; it hadn't soothed Ginny's anger and pain today.

"Then _stop_," Malfoy said, and shook him a little. "Firecall Weasley later and apologize if you like. Then _let it go. _Stop acting as though she has the right to scream at and denigrate you for months because of this. You're divorced. You no longer think of her immediately, the way you did before. _Let it go._"

Harry took a gulping sob, and did so. Then he lay back on the pillow, and closed his eyes. He didn't know if he needed Malfoy's Sleeping Draught. He felt pretty bloody worn out.

But Malfoy held the vial to his lips, and Harry automatically swallowed when he felt the thick potion edging down his throat. At least it was sweeter and blander than a lot of the other potions he'd had in the past.

The last thing he was aware of was that Malfoy hadn't moved from the bed, that he still had one hand on his shoulder, and that he was murmuring something too softly for Harry to make out. It might have been, "I'm here."


End file.
